Reprogrammable Magnetic Soft Actuators with Microfluidic Functional Modules via Pixel-Assembly.

Magnetic soft actuators and robots have attracted considerable attention in biomedical applications due to their speedy response, programmability, and biocompatibility. Despite recent advancements, the fabrication process of magnetic actuators and the reprogramming approach of their magnetization profiles continue to pose challenges. Here, a facile fabrication strategy is reported based on arrangements and distributions of reusable magnetic pixels on silicone substrates, allowing for various magnetic actuators with customizable architectures, arbitrary magnetization profiles, and integration of microfluidic technology.

Full integration of nucleic acid extraction and detection into a centrifugal microfluidic chip employing chitosan-modified microspheres.

Microfluidic devices especially centrifugal ones have attracted great attention in the nucleic acid testing field, due to their automation, high efficiency, and simple operation. In which, nucleic acid extraction is the basic step, laying a foundation for the downstream amplification and detection procedures. Therefore, the integration of nucleic acid extraction on the chip is expected to achieve cost-efficiency, high-speed automation, diagnostic accuracy, and reaction robustness with the respect to real-time detection.