regulating the flow of charge carriers by electronic components. This particular

analogy has helped in realizing functions like rectification and transistor action of

field effect transistor (FET) and bipolar junction transistor (BJT) with ionic currents.

16.3.1 Advantages of Microfluidic and Nanofluidic Systems

In research labs, only infinitesimal amount of samples and reagents are required

which could result in the cost reduction of reagents specifically the expensive one.

As a result, a high degree of sensitivity as well as resolution is achieved while

working with molecules. This further reduces extensive usage of complex equipment

and technologies. Time involved in the analysis also gets reduced considerably. The

nature of the flow of fluid in these micro-/nano-channels are laminar and smooth

which facilitates greater control of flow of fluid and various other experimental

parameters at this micro-/nano-scale.

16.3.2 Applications

Central usage of microfluidic systems could be recognized (Zhang and Austin 2012)

in

numerous

processes

such

as flow

cytometry, capillary

electrophoresis,

immunoassays, isoelectric focusing, sample injection in mass spectrometry, DNA

analysis, PCR amplification, cell patterning, and separation and management of

cells. These findings could be advantageously used (Beebe et al. 2002) in research

of antibiotic drug-resistant bacteria, observation of the chemical reaction kinetics,

Fig. 16.5 The NCAM (parallel nanocapillaries), each with pore radius, a/2, ~Debye length, κ
¹

[Adapted from Ugolini et al. 2017]

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K. Tankeshwar and S. Srivastava