Dolomite - the latest microfluidic news...

Dolomite has become a recognised world leader in the field of Microfluidics, a technology also known as ‘lab on a chip'. It is an exciting new field of science and engineering that enables very small-scale fluid control and analysis, allowing instrument manufacturers to develop smaller, more cost-effective and more powerful systems. With lab-on-a-chip technology, entire complex chemical or biological management and analysis systems are created in a microfluidic chip and interfaced with, for example, electronic and optical detection systems.


"Being able to design microfluidic devices in a multi-layer format gives us the freedom to make far more complex devices," said Phil Homewood, Head of Engineering. "At the moment we are primarily working with 3-layer devices, but already this offers the possibility to massively improve the performance and throughput of our devices e.g. our 'droplet generation' chip and our 'reactor' chips. We now have the potential to create a chip that could produce in excess of 32,000 droplets per second. For industries such as drug discovery and drug development, this level of microfluidic technology is very exciting news."

The fabrication processes used to create a microfluidic device have some similarity to those used in the electronics industry. The channels through which the fluids flow and interact are etched into materials such as glass or polymers using similar photolithography processes, for example. The patterned layers are then very accurately aligned and fused together and drilled to provide microscopic ports through which the chemicals or gases can enter and leave the device.

Dolomite has established itself as a leader in the field of microfluidics, working in chip design, chip fabrication, fluidic interfaces, flow cells, pumps, valves, detectors and integrated systems. They are also equipped with rapid prototyping facilities for the design and fabrication of glass and quartz devices and can provide low or medium volume production in glass or quartz and high volume production in polymers.

“Another exciting aspect of this development is that the specific benefits of microfluidics such as the accuracy and small size format can now be applied to production throughput for the first time,” said Phil. “We can ‘number up’ the processes in a chip, maybe even a hundred times. This will enable the chip to deliver production level throughput which are currently undertaken using more traditional batch processes that may be lower quality and less accurate.”

For more information on Dolomite's multi-layer microfluidic fabrication - contact sales@dolomite-microfluidics.com or call +44 (0)1763 242491. For a list of our international offices click here.

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