微流控纸芯片在环境分析检测中的应用

近年来,微流控纸芯片由于低成本、便携化、检测快等优点,在需要快速检测的环境分析领域中展现出了巨大的应用前景。该综述从微流控纸芯片在环境分析中的应用角度,总结归纳了微流控纸芯片在环境分析中的最新研究进展,并展望了其在未来的发展趋势与挑战。论文内容引用150余篇源于科学引文索引(SCI)与中文核心期刊中的相关论文。该综述包括微流控纸芯片在环境检测中的优势与制造方法介绍;电化学法、荧光法、比色法、表面增强拉曼法、集成传感法等基于纸芯片的先进分析方法介绍;根据环境分析目标物种类,如重金属离子、营养盐、农药、微生物、抗生素以及其他污染物等,对纸芯片的最新应用现状进行了举例评述;基于微流控纸芯片的环境分析研究的未来发展趋势和前景展望。通过综述近期相关研究,表明微流控纸芯片从提出至今虽然只有十几年的发展历程,但其在环境分析研究中的发展却十分迅速。微流控纸芯片可以根据不同的环境条件和检测要求灵活选择制作与分析方法,实现最佳的检测效果。但是微流控纸芯片也面临一些挑战,如纸张机械强度不足、流体控制程度不佳等问题。这些问题指出了微流控纸芯片在环境检测领域的发展趋势,相信随着不断深入的研究,纸芯片将会在未来的环境分析中发挥更大作用。

Applications of microfluidic paper-based chips in environmental analysis and detection

Microfluidic paper-based chips have many advantages such as ease of integration, miniaturization, and automation; high throughput; low production cost; easy portability; easy storage and transportation, environmental friendliness, and feasibility of instantaneous detection. These chips are widely used in clinical diagnosis, food quality control, and immunoassays. With the continuous development of microfluidic paper microarrays in recent years, they have also received great attention for environmental contaminant analysis and detection, and research in this field has been intensive, showing excellent prospects for application. This review summarizes the latest research progress in environmental analysis from the perspective of the application of microfluidic paper-based chips, as well as future development trends and challenges. More than 150 papers from the Science Citation Index (SCI) and Chinese core journals are cited in this paper. This review includes the advantages of microfluidic paper-based chips for environmental analysis and detection; the introduction of paper chip fabrication methods, including wax printing, photolithography, dicing, plasma, laser, and inkjet etching; and the introduction of advanced analytical methods based on paper chips, such as electrochemical analysis, fluorescence analysis, colorimetric analysis, surface-enhanced Raman analysis, and integrated sensing methods. The future development trends and prospects of environmental analysis based on microfluidic paper-based chips are also reviewed. Through a rich and comprehensive review of recent related research, it is shown that although microfluidic paper-based chip technology has only been developed for little more than a decade since its introduction, this technology has seen rapid development in environmental analysis-related research and has yielded rich results. The hydrophilic and porous nature of cellulose in paper as a chip substrate allows the passive transport of liquids without an external power source. The diversity of available microfluidic paper-based chip fabrication and analysis methods allows flexible selection and matching according to different environmental conditions and detection requirements, so that the best detection results can be obtained. Moreover, microfluidic paper chips as detection platforms show good biocompatibility in the analysis and detection of environmental pollutants, enabling the analysis of more types of pollutants. The used paper is biodegradable and can be directly disposed of as ordinary garbage after appropriate degradation treatment; thus it is environmentally friendly and does not impact the health of the operators. In addition, the low production cost and simple operation of the paper chip design study make it possible to fabricate low-cost, portable, and practical analytical equipment, which is important for rapid testing of the conventional environment. However, there are some inherent disadvantages: the mechanical strength of the paper is not sufficiently high to resist deformation; degree of fluid control is difficult to achieve the desired effect, and the sample flow may be lost due to leakage; multiple contaminants may interfere with one another when analyzed in parallel; there are difficulties in commercial mass production. However, these problems also point to the direction for the research and development of microfluidic paper-based chips in the field of environmental testing. With continuous advances in manufacturing and analysis technologies, microfluidic paper-based chips are expected to play a more prominent role in future environmental analysis.