Around 60 international experts on micro fluidics took the opportunity to network and share the latest trends at IVAM’s established symposium ΣYSTEMS INTEGRATION. Held on June 17, 2014 in Almelo, the Netherlands and hosted by WWINN BV, its key topic was ‘Automation in the production and application of micro fluidic devices in chemistry and biology’.
Micro fluidic components are already in use in analytics, medical diagnostics or chemical manufacturing with great success. Even so, microfluidic hardware always requires automated control technology. In his keynote Gerard Huiberts of WWINN was able to impressively illustrate his robots’ capabilities at the manufacture of micro technological components: Even most complex production stages are entirely automated and can be achieved with great cost-effectiveness.
Automation is essential not only in manufacture, but also in the application of micro fluidic components. Richard Bijlard of Invenios (USA) introduced the integration of sensors and actuators on a micro fluidic chip and was backed by Dr. Hans van den Vlekkert of LioniX (NL) who focused on optical sensors. As Clemens Kremer of micro fluidic ChipShop (DE) summarised: “Things are moving from ‘chip-in-a-lab’ to ‘lab-on-a-chip’.” Professor Volker Hessel of Eindhoven UT illustrated a host of applications from chemistry that would not be possible without micro fluidic components. The fact that these components then need to be integrated into larger systems presents another challenge for automation engineering. Ronny van’t Oever of micronit micro fluidics (NL) argued in favor of standardizing the micro-macro-interface.
The event was rounded out by Professor Han Gardeniers with a tour of Enschede’s renowned MESA+ Institute. Professor Gardeniers pointed out the advantages of micro fluidic systems for analysis – especially of very small sample sizes – e.g. in forensics.
ΣYSTEMS INTEGRATION is an annual conference focused on the processing and integration of micro components. Next year, ΣYSTEMS INTEGRATION will be held at VTT, Finland’s largest research facility, and will focus on ‘3D printing’.