Smart microscopic slide providing electro-acoustic actuation of a small fluidic sample and various microscopic illumination schemes

Abstract:
Half a century ago planar systems integration on silicon wafers started to revolutionize electronics, meanwhile micro/nanotechnologies and microsystems integration concepts have become a driving force in many technical disciplines. The benefits are not only smaller devices with an improved system performance but also entirely new applications. This is particularly true when heterogeneous functionalities from different disciplines (e.g. electronics, optics, mechanics, fluidics, chemistry) are combined on a common technological platform. In life sciences, the term lab-on-achip is often used in this context. Essential for such a lab-on-a-chip are microfluidic and mircooptical functionalities because biological or chemical specimen of interest are almost always immersed in an aqueous solution and need to be probed or observed optically. A planar integration approach for these two types of functionalities is investigated here. We call our general-purpose devices smart microscopic slides because, in addition to serving as a carrier for a fluid to be microscopically examined, they are equipped with microfluidic structures including a pump and with optical functionalities, specifically with various microscopic illumination schemes.