Abstract

Microfluidic Platforms Incorporating Design-For-Manufacture and Scale-Up of Production for De-Risking Commercialisation

Jens Ducree, Professor of Microsystems, Dublin City University

The high fragmentation of microfluidic technologies that emerged in academia and industry over the recent decades has significantly hampered economy-of-scale effects that are intimately linked to massive performance increase and cost reduction in the microelectronics industry. Consequently, the costs of technology development and production can often hardly match market demands. Along the example of centrifugal “Lab-on-a-Disc” technology, a streamlined platform approach implemented at the Fraunhofer Project Centre for Embedded Bioanalytical Systems at Dublin City University is presented which allows to significantly accelerate the application development and production scale-up, and thus to significantly de-risk investment.