Integrated Micro- and Nanofluidics: Silicon Revisited: (Keynote Paper)

Although silicon may generally not be the material of first choice for applications in the field of fluidics for (bio)chemistry and medicine, the extended toolbox of fabrication methods makes it a very attractive material for the demonstration of microfluidic principles for these fields. In particular, the monocrystalline nature of silicon substrates in combination with anisotropic etching processes, the precise dry-etching techniques and sophisticated thin-film surface micromachining processes, can be used to create a large variety of innovative microstructures. Several examples of such micro- and nanofluidic structures for (bio)chemical and medical analysis will be presented and discussed