? The goal of this symposium is to discuss material and engineering aspects of lab-on-a-chip devices and the application of microfluidics to materials synthesis. A microfabricated fluidic system integrating biological sample treatment and detection on a single chip (lab-on-a-chip) offers the promise of low-cost, rapid, and high-performance analysis. Miniaturized devices capable of manipulation and analysis of complex fluids containing particles, cell, or large biomolecules can perform high-throughput biochemical assays for drug discovery as well as provide portability for point-of-care diagnostics and biothreat monitoring. Microfluidic chips are also becoming a tool for materials manipulation and fabrication. Devices manipulating droplets are used to carry out various assays and to synthesize particles and particle assemblies. Directed liquid flows are used to assemble or synthesize in-situ nanodevices and nanocircuits. Lab-on-a-chip devices are usually fabricated using technologies adapted from the microelectronics industry and are the topic of extensive multidisciplinary research. Significant progress has been made in the development of building blocks, but attaining a high degree of integration of multiple functions on the same chip remains a challenge. Many of the remaining issues that must be addressed to allow """"""""complete"""""""" integrated systems are materials related. New approaches are required to overcome problems such as nonspecific surface interactions or heterogeneous surface chemistries, and to achieve low-cost manufacturing, ultrasensitive quantification, nanoscale manipulation, and interfacing. ? Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following areas: ? Materials optimized for microfabrication and biocompatibility ? Coatings for specific adhesion, ligand immobilizations, and antifouling ? On-chip fluid transport, mixing, separation, filtration, and integration with detection schemes ? On-chip sample preconcentration and treatment of complex biological matrices (blood, food, and environmental samples) ? On-chip manipulation and assembly of colloidal particles ? Functional nanostructures on a chip ? Synthesis of complex particles and capsules in microfluidic devices ? Assembly of nanowires and electronic nanodevices by microfluidic flows ? Theoretical modeling of fluidics phenomena at the micro- and nanoscale as well as of complex fluid behavior (droplets, suspensions, and biological systems) in lab-on-a-chip devices ? Advances in fabrication techniques, such as nanoimprint lithography, for micro- and nanofluidic applications ? On-chip detection approaches ? World-to-chip interface ? ? ?
