| Miniaturized fluidic devices capable of performing biochemical assays on glass, silicon or polymer substrates have fuelled the development of integrated 'micro-Total Analysis Systems (muTAS)' or 'Lab-on-a-Chip' (LOC) systems. These miniaturized LOC devices offer several advantages over their conventional bench top counterparts such as, reduced reagents and samples requirements, short reaction times, parallel processing, reduced cost, lower power consumption, portability and amiable to automation.;Furthermore, the utility and prospects of integrated L-DEP and D-DEP sample actuation schemes for high throughput (HT) microfluidic applications and parallel sample processing capabilities are also explored. Lastly the performance and capabilities of surface microfluidic systems are compared with conventional closed channel microfluidic devices.;Surface microfluidic systems, leveraging electric fields for the manipulation and transport of discrete nano-liter droplets on open planar surfaces have emerged as an attractive alternative to conventional closed-channel microfluidic devices. The present research work discusses dielectrophoretic liquid and droplet actuations, which provide an attractive methodology for dispensing and manipulating nano and pico-liter droplets on planar surfaces. The capabilities of surface microfluidic systems are demonstrated through the integration of two independent sample actuation schemes, namely liquid dielectrophoresis (L-DEP) and droplet dielectrophoresis (D-DEP). |
