Photoactive Functional Soft Materials (Preparation, Properties, and Applications) || Soft Photoactuators in Microfluidics

摘要： Microfluidics, also known as lab‐on‐a‐chip (LOC) and micro‐total‐analysis‐system (μTAS), cover a set of multidisciplinary technologies dealing with the manipulation of small amounts of liquids to perform reactions, analyses, or fundamental investigations in biology, physics, and at the interdisciplinary frontiers. In contrast to the conventional bulky bench‐top instruments and the associated manual methods to handle large amounts of biological and chemical reagents that are pretty time consuming and not so environmentally friendly, a fine control over the motion of continuous fluids or nano/picoliter‐sized discrete droplets in microscale channels is beneficial in miniaturized systems. Therefore, there is a growing interest in downscaling the corresponding processes within LOCs and still retaining cost‐effectiveness and ease of fabrication. The microfluidic systems possess intrinsic features including minimized consumption of reagents, portability, increased automation, reduced time, and cost efficiency, which make them particularly attractive from a wide range of laboratory and industrial perspectives.