Optofluidic microsystems for chemical and biological analysis

Optofluidics — the synergistic integration of photonics and microfluidics — is a new analytical field that provides a number of unique characteristics for enhancing the sensing performance and simplifying the design of microsystems. This Review describes various optofluidic architectures developed over the past five years, emphasizes the mechanisms by which optofluidics enhances biological/chemical analytic capabilities, including sensing and the precise control of biological micro- and nanoparticles, and also highlights new research directions to which the field of optofluidics may lead.