Microthermofluidic systems: From conceptualization to implementation for point of care diagnostic applications

In recent years, there has been diligent expansion with emerging technological trends in developing microthermofluidic systems. Basically, a microthermofluidic system originates from integrating microfluidic technology and a thermal management system onto a single platform for accurate and stable heat transfer within the microchannel for several biomedical, pharmaceutical, and biochemical applications. In microfluidic devices, temperature is anelementary parameter. Still, it is sporadically ignored because of the non-uniform distribution of heat, high thermal dissipation, and the challenges associated with conventional heaters being able to be integrated into a microfluidic channel. The existing heaters are large, consume more power, are hard to incorporate advanced technological trends and fail to be used for point-of-care testing. Herein, the microthermofluidic system plays an incredible role in a microscale environment that manipulates a minimal fluid volume and offers the desired temperature uniformly on-chip. The microthermofluidic system can be accomplished for countless universal applications in healthcare, food processing, agriculture, chemical engineering, drug delivery, and clinical settings. This article comprehensively discusses the evolution and role of microthermofluidic systems, the significance of material selection, geometric design with appropriate optimization, and different fabrication tools involved in developing integrated microthermofluidic systems that undergo numerous biological and biochemical analyses. Further, the article sheds light on recent advances in microthermofluidic systems that have been implemented and are used for several applications. It also describes miniaturized thermoelectric devices.