From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Fri Oct 18 2002 - 17:58:20 MDT
The N.Y. Times science section today has a very nice article the
microfluidics work being done by Steven Quake's group at CalTech.
A Chip of Rubber, With Tiny Rivers Running Through It
Anne Eisenberg
Oct 17 2002.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/17/technology/circuits/17next.html?pagewanted=print&position=top
This is the layperson's view of this work:
Science 2002 Oct 18;298(5593):580-4
Microfluidic large-scale integration.
Thorsen T, Maerkl SJ, Quake SR.
Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Option, Department of Applied
Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA.
Abstract: We developed high-density microfluidic chips that contain
plumbing networks with thousands of micromechanical valves and hundreds of
individually addressable chambers. These fluidic devices are analogous to
electronic integrated circuits fabricated using large-scale integration. A
key component of these networks is the fluidic multiplexor, which is a
combinatorial array of binary valve patterns that exponentially increases
the processing power of a network by allowing complex fluid manipulations
with a minimal number of inputs. We used these integrated microfluidic
networks to construct the microfluidic analog of a comparator array and a
microfluidic memory storage device whose behavior resembles random-access
memory.
For those with a Science subscription:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/rapidpdf/1076996v1
(watch out the pictures are *BIG*).
This URL will get you the related articles from PubMed.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov:80/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed&cmd=Display&dopt=pubmed_pubmed&from_uid=12351675
Science just got a little bit faster boys and girls.
Robert
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