Abstract
Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) have become promising tools offering various analytical applications for chemical and biological assays at the point-of-care (POC). Compared to traditional microfluidic devices, µPADs offer notable advantages; they are cost-effective, easily fabricated, disposable, and portable. Because of our better understanding and advanced engineering of µPADs, multistep assays, high detection sensitivity, and rapid result readout have become possible, and recently developed µPADs have gained extensive interest in parallel analyses to detect biomarkers of interest. In this review, we focus on recent developments in order to achieve µPADs with high-throughput capability. We discuss existing fabrication techniques and designs, and we introduce and discuss current detection methods and their applications to multiplexed detection assays in relation to clinical diagnosis, drug analysis and screening, environmental monitoring, and food and beverage quality control. A summary with future perspectives for µPADs is also presented.
Highlights
Microfluidics is the science of fluid manipulation in a microscale network and deals with controlling fluid samples with low volumes (10−9 to 10−18 L) inside micrometer-scale channels [1,2].Though the first known microfluidic device was documented in 1979 [3], it mostly dealt with materials like silicon, glass, and polymers such as polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), polystyrene (PS), polycarbonate (PC), and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) [4]
The entire “sample-to-answer” assay could be completed within 1 h. This system, suffered from the lack of both reproducibility and the capability to perform multiplex detection; it was still complicated due to different temperatures that had to be applied. Another effort came from Rodriguez et al, who provided a platform for molecular diagnosis of cervical cancer by combining nucleic acid isolation, isothermal amplification, and lateral flow assay for visual detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) 16 deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) [22]
Significant progress in the development of μPADs for high-throughput screening has been made, various platforms for a short time and multiplex assays can be used for multiple samples from different individuals
Summary
Microfluidics is the science of fluid manipulation in a microscale network and deals with controlling fluid samples with low volumes (10−9 to 10−18 L) inside micrometer-scale channels [1,2]. Owing to intrinsic attractive features of DMF, p-DMF devices render transporting, mixing, merging, spitting, dispensing droplet(s), and delaying the actuations that are the most important basic droplet manipulations in protocols for performing a specific microfluidic assay Together, both p-CMF and p-DMF devices can serve as portable and disposable platforms that once more functionalities are added, such as storing reagents, patterning electrodes, integrating with other sensors, e.g., electrochemical sensors, they will complete prerequisite characteristics for analytical assay [5,20,21]. According to our SciFinder search of journals, patents, reviews, conference abstracts, dissertations, editorials, and letters at the time of this writing, 2071 reports mentioned “paper-based” and “microfluidic” and 831 reports mentioned “paper-based analytical device” With their many advantages, μPADs are most suitable for use in point-of-care testing (POCT) and field monitoring, for which high-throughput screening is often required.
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