Development of a Mobile Analytical Chemistry Workstation Using a Silicon Electrochromatography Microchip and Capacitively Coupled Contactless Conductivity Detector

Breaking the clean room barrier: exploring low-cost alternatives for microfluidic devices

Microfluidics is an interdisciplinary field that encompasses both science and engineering, which aims to design and fabricate devices capable of manipulating extremely low volumes of fluids on a microscale level. The central objective of microfluidics is to provide high precision and accuracy while using minimal reagents and equipment. The benefits of this approach include greater control over experimental conditions, faster analysis, and improved experimental reproducibility. Microfluidic devices, also known as labs-on-a-chip (LOCs), have emerged as potential instruments for optimizing operations and decreasing costs in various of industries, including pharmaceutical, medical, food, and cosmetics. However, the high price of conventional prototypes for LOCs devices, generated in clean room facilities, has increased the demand for inexpensive alternatives. Polymers, paper, and hydrogels are some of the materials that can be utilized to create the inexpensive microfluidic devices covered in this article. In addition, we highlighted different manufacturing techniques, such as soft lithography, laser plotting, and 3D printing, that are suitable for creating LOCs. The selection of materials and fabrication techniques will depend on the specific requirements and applications of each individual LOC. This article aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the numerous alternatives for the development of low-cost LOCs to service industries such as pharmaceuticals, chemicals, food, and biomedicine.

The Fabrication of Amino Acid Incorporated Nanoflowers with Intrinsic Peroxidase-like Activity and Its Application for Efficiently Determining Glutathione with TMB Radical Cation as Indicator

The assessment of glutathione (GSH) levels is associated with early diagnostics and pathological analysis for various disorders. Among all kinds of techniques for detecting GSH, the colorimetric assay relying on the oxidation of 3,3′,5,5′-tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) catalyzed by many nanomaterials with peroxidase-like activity attracts increasing attention owing to its outstanding merits, such as high sensitivity and high selectivity. However, the aggregation between the nanomaterials severely hinders the entrance of TMB into the “active site” of these peroxidase mimics. To address this problem, the D-amino acid incorporated nanoflowers possessing peroxidase-like activity with a diameter of 10–15 μm, TMB and H₂O₂ were employed to establish the detection system for determining the level of glutathione. The larger diameter size of the hybrid nanoflowers substantially averts the aggregation between them. The results confirm that the hybrid nanoflowers detection system presents a low limit of detection, wide linear range, perfect selectivity, good storage stability and desired operational stability for the detection of GSH relying on the intrinsic peroxidase-like activity and favorable mechanical stability of the hybrid nanoflowers, indicating that the hybrid nanoflowers detection system has tremendous application potential in clinical diagnosis and treatment.