Towards medical diagnostic chips with monolithically integrated optics in glass substrates

Abstract : Our objective is to develop miniaturised Lab‐on‐a‐Chip (LOC) analysers, for medical diagnostics and for monitoring of the health status of ill persons. The complete system will make use of disposable chip sensors of the size of a credit card and a control unit of the size of a book. The principle of sensors will be based on the determination of the concentration of “protein markers”, which are related to various illnesses. In order to achieve this objective, it is necessary to integrate some optical components in the Chip. In this contribution we describe a successful development of electrophoretic separation LOC with monolithically integrated optics. These optical components are used for the excitation and for the detection of the fluorescence signal from separated bio‐molecules. The developed module can be considered as one of the main building‐block of the completed diagnostic Chip. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)