Towards lab-on-a-chip approaches in real analytical domains based on microfluidic chips/electrochemical multi-walled carbon nanotube platforms.

"Lab-on-a-chip" approaches based on the novel marriage between an electrokinetic microfluidic platform and nanotechnology is proposed for analytical domains. Conceptually, the analytical challenges are linked with the analytical promises offered from the integration of lab-on-a-chip and nanotechnologies. The analytical suitability of the electrokinetic microfluidic platform with multi-walled carbon nanotubes as detectors is proposed based on its dual format/use as a flow and separation system, independently. Two relevant applications of high significance, determination of total isoflavones and fast detection of antioxidant profiles were chosen to demonstrate their analytical potential. For both analytical uses, the target challenges, the strategy proposed, the expected role of microfluidics and carbon nanotubes and future prospects are discussed and demonstrated. A good analytical performance of the proposed microfluidic platform in terms of reliability, versatility and fast analytical solutions is demonstrated.