Recent developments in electrokinetically driven analysis on microfabricated devices

Abstract

This review is devoted to the rapid developments in the field of microfluidic separation devices in which the flow is electrokinetically driven, and where the separation element forms the heart of the system, in order to give an overview of the trends of the last three years. Examples of microchip layouts that were designed for various application areas are given. Optimization of mixing and injection strategies, designs for the handling of multiple samples, and capillary array systems show the enormous progress made since the first proof‐of‐concept papers about lab‐on‐a‐chip devices. Examples of functional elements for on‐chip preconcentration, filtering, DNA amplification and on‐chip detection indicate that the real integration of various analytical tasks on a single microchip is coming into reach. The use of materials other than glass, such as poly(dimethylsiloxane) and polymethylmethacrylate, for chip fabrication and detection methods other than laser‐induced fluorescence (LIF) detection, such as mass spectrometry and electrochemical detection, are described. Furthermore, it can be observed that the separation modes known from capillary electrophoresis (CE) in fused‐silica capillaries can be easily transferred to the microchip platform. The review concludes with an overview of applications of microchip CE and with a brief outlook.