Lab-on-a-chip

A lab-on-a-chip (LOC) refers to a device or system that performs macroscale laboratory processes at small scales, typically from a few millimeters to centimeters in size. LOCs started in the field of biology and chemistry, where the improvement of analysis throughput and sensitivity was sought through miniaturization and advanced instrumentation. In a similar context, micro total analysis systems (mTAS), which integrate the steps necessary to perform a chemical analysis on one chip, were first described in 1990 (Manz et al., 1990). An LOC describes a wide range of chip-format devices that miniaturize a laboratory process, and they include both microfluidic chips and non-fluidic biochips, which have been demonstrated with microarray technology (Dittrich and Manz, 2006).