Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies

Lab-on-a-chip technologies, also known as μ-TAS (or micro-total analytical systems), involving the integration of analysis into devices and systems, have made significant impacts over the last four decades, providing methods to analyse real samples outside of the laboratory on a micro-engineered chip. The field includes the use of microfluid technologies for sample preparation, separation, and analyte detection, performed in miniaturised formats. Many of the analytical advantages associated with the technology arise from the micro- or nano-scale dimensions involved, including the short times for mass transfer across reduced distances, or the unique materials’ properties arising from nanoscale dimensions. Frontiers in Lab on a Chip Technologies addresses the fabrication and use of such devices through cross-disciplinary research spanning many subject-specific aspects of chemistry, engineering, computing science and molecular biology as well as clinical and veterinary sciences. The journal has a broad remit ranging from fundamental studies in fluids and material science to real-world applications. This includes the use of expert systems with deep learning/artificial intelligence to provide users with decision support, helping to guide or inform clinical or environmental analysis in the field, particularly in remote and often low-resource settings where laboratory facilities are unavailable. The journal also wishes to address new developments in lab-on-a-chip technology that help to meet important challenges around our global targets in sustainability and net-zero, including not only the analysis of the environment and of our impact on it, but also more generally, the mitigation of single-use plastics in analysis and the use of low-power, recyclable microsystems technologies.