Thermal microdevices for biological and biomedical applications

Temperature strongly influences the form and function of biologically important macromolecules and cells. Advances in microfabrication technology have enabled highly localized and accurate temperature control and manipulation, allowing the investigation of thermal effects on biological microsystems. This paper reviews progress in this field, with emphasis on techniques and microdevices with biomedical applications. Recent advances in the study of thermal effects on cellular behavior, enabled by MEMS-based structures are reported. These studies focus on investigating thermal interactions between the cell and its microenvironment. Thermal-based tools for concentration and purification of biologically important macromolecules like DNA and proteins are summarized. These tools address common issues in protein/DNA research, like concentration, separation and purification of samples. With the increasing research focus on the integration of biomedicine with engineering technologies and the several incentives of miniaturization, MEMS-based devices are likely to become increasingly prevalent in biology and medicine. Thermal engineering is expected to continue to play an important role in the improvement of current microdevices and the development of new ones.