Micro/Nano Technologies and Their Biological and Medical Applications

Abstract

Recently, biomedical or biological micro/nano electromechanical systems (Bio-MEMS/NEMS) have been extensively explored in a wide variety of biomedical applications. These systems realized by micro/nano fabrication techniques comprising micropumps, microvalves, microfilters, micromixers, microchannels, microsensors, and microreactors are also referred to as micro-total-analytical-systems (μTAS) or lab-on-a-chip (LOC). Crucial processes including sample pretreatment, transportation, reaction, mixing, separation, and detection can be performed on a single chip. Various biosamples such as bloods, urines, cells, pathogens, proteins, DNA, or RNA can be used to perform the processes including cell culture, cell sorting and counting, cell lysis, DNA/RNA extraction, purification, amplification, separation, detection, and pathogen detection. In this chapter, these technologies have been reviewed to demonstrate their important biomedical or biological applications in a variety of fields, such as biological and chemical analysis, point-of-care diagnosis, clinical and forensic analysis, molecular diagnosis, drug discovery, and disease detection.