A fabrication of a novel microfluidic reactor microsynthesis of MIP's particles

Microfabrication offers us the ability to fabricate numerous active devices at the micro-scale by patterning features on a variety of substrates for developing small devices in nanotechnology. Since materials scientists and chemists have been looking for unconventional approaches in the synthesis of novel materials, we introduce here a novel strategy of fabricating microfluidic reactors. A new microfluidic reactor was designed and fabricated for the microscale synthesis of materials, which has not been possible from conventional bulk syntheses. The microreactor presents a continuous, dynamic droplet generation. Using the microfluidic reactor, we demonstrate here a microfluidic synthesis of molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP), which is useful for bio- or chemical sensor applications due to its specific molecular recognition functions. Since the particle size of MIP's system directly affects their affinity capability in molecular recognitions, uniform MIPs' particles at the nano- or micro-scale were produced via the microfluidic technique to achieve high sensitivity by developing 'monoclonal' MIPs particles, which have only high affinity binding sites.