Microfluidic components for biological and chemical microreactors

Miniaturized reaction systems offer many advantages for a large number of applications in chemical engineering and biotechnology. The very large surface-to-volume ratio of miniaturized fluidic components allows for a significantly enhanced process control and heat management, enabling the performance of chemical reactions in quite unusual reaction regimes. Miniaturized chemical systems offer unique possibilities for the distributed point-of-use production of toxic or explosive chemicals. The extremely large number of syntheses necessary for the development of new, for example pharmaceutical, products, demands the use of automated processing systems capable of handling very small amounts of liquids. Current microfabrication techniques offer possibilities to fabricate high precision microfluidic components, like static mixers, heat exchangers and micropumps from a large variety of function adapted materials. Improvements of the microstructuring capabilities of traditional precision mechanics techniques, like spark erosion based processes, lead to a significant enhancement of the range of materials to be used for the construction of micro reaction systems