ABSTRACT
A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) refers to a de vice or system t hat performs macroscale laboratory processes at small scales, typically from a few millimeters to centimeters in size. LOCs started in the eld of biology and chemistry, where the improvement of analysis throughput and sensitivity was sought through miniaturization and advanced instrumentation. In a si milar context, micro total analysis systems (mTAS), which i ntegrate t he s teps necessary to p erform a c hemical a nalysis on one chip, were rst described in 1990 (Manz et al., 1990). An LOC describes a w ide range of chip-format devices that miniaturize a laboratory process, and they include both micro uidic chips and non- uidic biochips, which have been demonstrated with microarray technology (Dittrich and Manz, 2006).
