Microfluidics Era in Chemistry Field: A Review

By miniaturizing the reactor dimension, microfluidic devices are attracting world attention and starting the microfluidic era, especially in the chemistry field because they offer great advantages such as rapid processes, small amount of the required reagents, low risk, ease and accurate control, portable and possibility of online monitoring. Because of that, microfluidic devices have been massively investigated and applied for the real application of human life. This review summarizes the up-to-date microfluidic research works including continuous-flow, droplet-based, open-system, paper-based and digital microfluidic devices. The brief fabrication technique of those microfluidic devices, as well as their potential application for particles separation, solvent extraction, nanoparticle fabrication, qualitative and quantitative analysis, environmental monitoring, drug delivery, biochemical assay and so on, are discussed. Recent perspectives of the microfluidics as a lab-on-chip or micro total analysis system device and organ-on-chip are also introduced.