Dr Despina Moschou Commercialization of lab-on-a-chip devices is currently the “holy grail” within the μTAS research community. While a wide variety of highly sophisticated chips which could potentially revolutionize healthcare, biology, chemistry and all related disciplines are increasingly being demonstrated, very few chips are or can be adopted by the market and reach the end-users. A major inhibition factor lies in the lack of an established commercial manufacturing technology. The lab-on-printed circuit board (lab-on-PCB) approach, while suggested many years ago, only recently has re-emerged as a very strong candidate, owing to its inherent upscaling potential: the PCB industry is well established all around the world, with standardized fabrication facilities and processes, but commercially exploited currently only for electronics.
Dr. Despina Moschou (M. Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering, PhD in Microelectronic Technology) is a 50th anniversary Prize Fellow/Lecturer in Bioelectronics, within the Department of Electronic & Electrical Engineering at the University of Bath. Since 2010, her main research focus has been in the development of disposable Lab-On-a-Chip systems for bioanalytical applications (molecular and immunoassay-based Point-of-Care diagnostic devices). For the past 7 years she has been pursuing the Lab-on-Printed Circuit Board approach, in an effort to realize disposable, mass-manufacturable Lab-on-Chip microsystems. Her interests also include inkjet printing technologies, adding further functionality to biomedical diagnostic systems.