Control In Microfluidic Devices

Microfluidic devices have the potential to have a broad impact on society through the miniaturization and massive parallelization of chemical assays and experiments.  Many separation, reaction, and transport components have been developed for these devices but the major issues that arise when designing complex system can often be traced to the control of the components.  Control of some components is relatively straightforward: the temperature in a reactor can be controlled by simply fabricating metal lines (i.e., heaters and temperature sensors) near the chamber. Other situations, such as migrating bands in an electrophoresis gel or the position of fluid samples in channels, require more complex solutions. In this talk, I will describe several examples of both problems and solutions of these control issues.