Monday, October 19, 2009

Labs-On-A-Chip That You Can Shrink To Fit

Shrinking down to size (Image: Maggie Bartlett, NHGRI)

From New Scientist:

INTEL's latest microchip technology has created transistors 22 nanometres wide - a mere 200 times the width of a hydrogen molecule. Carving such tiny features is devilishly difficult and expensive, but in another realm of microchips altogether, something odd is happening: chips are being made on an outsized scale and then shrunk to the required size, avoiding much fiddly hassle.

The shrinking innovation is happening in the field of the "lab-on-a-chip". Such chips are typically plastic slivers scored with serried ranks of fluid-filled microchannels and recessed pools for chemical reactions to occur in; they are often replete with deposits of chemicals, cells and proteins of interest.

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