Markets & Applications
From the life sciences to the food industry, many applications require the use of fluids driven at flow rates from nanoliters to milliliters per minute. At such low flows, the success of these applications strongly depends on the level of control and automation of the fluidic operations.
These applications require flow control systems that are adapted for ensuring their success.
Life Science
Microfluidics provides capabilities to control cellular microenvironments with high spatiotemporal precision and to present cells with mechanical and biochemical signals in a more physiologically relevant context.
- Microscopy and cell biology: Using flow cells or microfluidic chips along with a fluid perfusion system and microscopy allows progress in several applications including DNA or RNA hybridization, drug combination and long-term perfusion, or immunostaining.
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- Cell culture and Organ on a chip: This technology presents an ideal microenvironment to study molecular – and cellular-scale activities that underlie human organ function , as well as identify new therapeutic targets in vitro.
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- Digital PCR: Microfluidic dPCR offers a new level of precision compared to quantitative PCR (qPCR). Droplet-based microfluidic is an excellent solution to partition a sample.
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Pharmaceutics
Drug delivery: Microparticles and emulsions are used for a wide variety of pharmaceutical products including intravenous, intramuscular, ocular, or orally delivered compounds. Emulsions are also used as templates for polymer microparticles, lipid nanoparticles, or microcapsules. These latter are used for drug delivery, with the emulsion being the active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) itself, or as an adjuvant for co-administration.
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Food Industry
- Emulsion production: The unique nature of emulsions as thermodynamically stable dispersions, when generated with a size distribution of different sized droplets has made them suitable for a number of applications in food industries.
- Food analysis: Food safety analysis is important to control food contamination and quality. It is needed to construct effective methods for on-site, fast, and accurate food safety sensing. Microfluidic based analytical systems are attractive because of their inherent features of speed of analysis and low sample volumes.
Cosmetics
Droplet-based microfluidics offers many advantages for cosmetic products. As reagents are encapsulated within a droplet, active ingredients can be preserved up to the moment of application. Droplets do not burst until they are applied directly to the skin, providing a sensory experience and more efficient moisturization.
Microfluidics offers high control over droplet size, formulation, and aesthetics (colors, pigments) while providing unmatched monodispersity compared to traditional batch methods. Manufacturers can develop custom products with visual and sensory feels specific to their brand.
Water Analysis
Water security is recognized as one of the great challenges of the 21st century by many international organizations. Continuous monitoring of water resources such as freshwater, seawater, wastewater, and drinking water, for human and animal consumption, is essential.
Conventional water monitoring is mainly based on laboratory instruments or sophisticated and expensive handheld probes for on-site analysis. This requires trained personnel and can be time-consuming.
Microfluidic devices provide a way to perform analysis at remote locations, enabling in situ analysis at the point of sampling. Reduced measurement times, improvements in sensitivity, enhancement of selectivity, and high repeatability are advantages of microfluidic devices when integrated into miniaturized chemical systems.
Fluigent helps researcher and industry by providing best-in-class research instruments as well as industrial products and systems, combined with strong expertise in fluid management.
Research Solutions
Our innovative pressure-based microfluidic controllers are compatible with lab on a chip devices and a wide variety of microfluidic technologies that will allow you to focus on the science, not on the setup.
Industrial Solutions
The way to automate your fluid handling for industrial applications.
We offer components, integration, and on-demand engineering services based on our pressure and microfluidic knowledge and expertise.