Microfluidic fuel cells on paper

By Chemistry World2014-05-08T00:00:00

Source: © Royal Society of Chemistry

Point-of-care devices harvest energy from test samples

Paper is cheap, biodegradable, thin and flexible, making it an ideal base material for single-use tests. The paper-based microfluidic fuel cells created by Juan Pablo Esquivel, at the Barcelona Microelectronics Institute of the National Microelectronics Centre, IMB-CNM (CSIC), in Spain, and colleagues, were inspired by the convenience and simplicity of lateral flow test strips – pregnancy tests are probably the most well-known example of these – and take advantage of capillary diffusion to transport reactants without external pumps.

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