| Microfluidic technology has the potential to revolutionize practices in analytical chemistry, biology and point of care applications, through the introduction of small, automated and portable microfluidic systems that can replicate fluidic assays using reduced amount of samples. However, this cannot be realized without integrating active components and functionalities into these devices, which has presented a significant challenge for microfluidic fabrication. In this work, a modular integration method is proposed to promote standardized and low cost fabrication of microfluidic systems on printed circuit boards (PCB) and allow the integration of standard electronic components into these systems. Industrial polyurethane is introduced and characterized to fabricate microfluidics on PCBs. A novel surface mount microfluidic thermal component is reported and successfully integrated into a microfluidic chip to perform on-chip cell lysis and isotachophoretic separation of analytes. |
