Nanofluidics is a recent appearing research field, introduced in 1995 as an analogue of the field of microfluidics, and has been becoming popular in the past few years. The proximity of the channel dimension, the Debye length, and the size of biomolecules such as DNA and proteins gives the unique features of nanofluidic devices. Of various unique properties of the nanofluidics, mass transport in nanochannel plays determining roles in fundamental reaches and practical applications of nanofluidic device. Thus, much work including numerical and experimental researches has been performed to investigate the mass transport behaviors in nanofluidic devices. This review summarizes the fabrication technologies for nanofluidic devices, the mass transport behaviors in nanochannel, and their applications in bioanalysis. The main focus will be laid on the effects of nanochannel size and surface charge on mass transport including electrokinetic transport of charged analytes, diffusion of electric neutral molecules, ionic current rectification, concentration polarization, nonlinear electrokinetic flow at the micro-nanofluidic interfaces.
In this paper,liquid droplet master was for the first time used to fabricate thin membranes integrated polymeric microfluidic devices.As demonstration,water liquid droplet master was used to make a thin membrane in PDMS microfluidic devices which were prepared by using printed master.The PDMS membrane can be controlled down to approximately 10 μm thick with considerable vapour permeation which was adjusted by environmental humidity.An array of the microfluidic devices with thin PDMS membranes was also used for monitoring the crystallization of NaCl.
