Abstract
Optofluidics incorporates optics and microfluidics together to construct novel devices for microsystems, providing flexible reconfigurability and high compatibility. Among many novel devices, a prominent one is the in-plane optofluidic lens. It manipulates the light in the plane of the substrate, upon which the liquid sample is held. Benefiting from the compatibility, the in-plane optofluidic lenses can be incorporated into a single chip without complicated manual alignment and promises high integration density. In term of the tunability, the in-plane liquid lenses can be either tuned by adjusting the fluidic interface using numerous microfluidic techniques, or by modulating the refractive index of the liquid using temperature, electric field and concentration. In this paper, the in-plane liquid lenses will be reviewed in the aspects of operation mechanisms and recent development. In addition, their applications in lab-on-a-chip systems are also discussed.
Highlights
Nowadays, miniaturized systems are playing important roles in both academic research and industrial applications
This review focuses on the in-plane optofluidic lenses, including the working mechanisms and their applications in lab-on-a-chip systems
In ourin previous we presented an optofluidic tunable for lens using the laser-induced gradient, which awork, refractive index (RI) gradient is established in microscale lens using the laser-induced gradient, a RIto gradient is established microscale for
Summary
Nowadays, miniaturized systems are playing important roles in both academic research and industrial applications. Optofluidics combines optics and microfluidics together to construct novel elements for lab-on-a-chip applications [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. Compared with its solid counterpart, optofluidics has some unique merits [8,9,10,11], such as flexible tunability, good compatibility, small size and easy fabrication, etc. It has been intensively studied by numerous research communities [1,2,3,7,12,13]. The optofluidic lens is the most extensive exploited part
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