Lab on a Lego

MIT engineers have just introduced an element of fun into microfluidics.

The field of microfluidics involves minute devices that precisely manipulate fluids at  submillimeter scales. Such devices typically take the form of flat, two-dimensional chips, etched with tiny channels and ports that are arranged to perform various operations, such as mixing, sorting, pumping, and storing fluids as they flow.

Now the MIT team, looking beyond such lab-on-a-chip designs, has found an alternative microfluidics platform in “interlocking, injection-molded blocks” — or, as most of us know them, LEGO bricks.

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