Microfluidics - a lab in your palm

A few decades ago electronics evolved from huge circuits based on vacuum tubes into small scale semiconducting integrated circuits. In simple words, a calculator that was as huge as a room, now fits into a wrist watch. Nowadays, a similar trend is observed in bio and chemical engineering. Analysis and synthesis involving fluids, which originally could be done only on large scales, are more and more integrated into small devices called microfluidic chips. Such microsacle or even nanoscale devices, in general called lab-on-a-chip devices, offer a higher accuracy and better efficiency compared to bulk devices. In this article we describe some important aspects about microfluidics.