Abstract

Microfluidic engineering technology has been widely used for implementing lab-on-chip (LOC) type point of care (POC) devices since its origins in the 1990’s. LOC devices offer some distinct advantages such as the possibility of reducing the quantity of valuable samples or reagents needed and the shortening of the detections times, both of which result from the compact structure of such LOC devices.[1] However, although there have been a large number of achievements in this field, there is still a bottleneck in the development of commercialized products, which can be attributed to a disconnect between users, academic researchers and manufacturers.[2]This situation is changing however with the emergence of capillary-based microfluidic devices, which can help avoid the requirement for external pumps. Paper, which is one of the most common available and used porous materials, has been thoroughly researched for fabrication of such microfluidic devices during the last two decades. Other porous materials such as nitrocellulose and glass fibre, with their unique characteristics are equally important building-blocks for fluidic-based medical diagnostics applications.

© 2015 IEEE