미세 생명·화학시스템의 새로운 응용분야

Abstract

Nowadays, chemical engineering has faced fatal problems including the high cost of R&D, the environmental pollution, and high energy consumption. This is one of reasons that chemical industry is behind other industries such as electronic industry in competitive edge. To overcome these problems in chemical industry, process-on-chip is suggested as the counterproposal and combinatorial technology in discovering new materials has drawn an interest. Combinatorial technology is involved in high-throughput screening that can find novel high-performance materials and catalysts more quickly, less costly and more successfully by using rapid characterization of physical and chemical properties. This consists of four steps, (1) making optimal combinatorial samples, (2) synthesis of combinatorial chip or samples at one time, (3) primary screening for combinatorial chip or samples and (4) rapid characterization of physical and chemical properties of samples. Process-on-chip means the chemical factory built on the chip. Therefore, this combines the microfluidic reactor with analytic systems to carry out complex catalytic chemical reactions and the reaction of harmful materials that is impossible in conventional chemical process. This is the expansion of Lab-on-a-chip and can be applied into various fields from the DNA sensor to micro-fuel cell. In particular, it is challengeable in our country because process-on-chip is undeveloped field until now, and therefore it is expected that this technique can stimulate our chemical industry.