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Review
. 2024 Feb 2:12:1355768.
doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2024.1355768. eCollection 2024.

Simple microfluidic devices for in situ detection of water contamination: a state-of-art review

Buthaina A AlMashrea  1   2 , Ahmed M Almehdi  1 , Samar Damiati  1
Affiliations
Review

Simple microfluidic devices for in situ detection of water contamination: a state-of-art review

Buthaina A AlMashrea et al. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. .

Abstract

Water security is an important global issue that is pivotal in the pursuit of sustainable resources for future generations. It is a multifaceted concept that combines water availability with the quality of the water's chemical, biological, and physical characteristics to ensure its suitability and safety. Water quality is a focal aspect of water security. Quality index data are determined and provided via laboratory testing using expensive instrumentation with high maintenance costs and expertise. Due to increased practices in this sector that can compromise water quality, innovative technologies such as microfluidics are necessary to accelerate the timeline of test procedures. Microfluidic technology demonstrates sophisticated functionality in various applications due to the chip's miniaturization system that can control the movement of fluids in tiny amounts and be used for onsite testing when integrated with smart applications. This review aims to highlight the basics of microfluidic technology starting from the component system to the properties of the chip's fabricated materials. The published research on developing microfluidic sensor devices for monitoring chemical and biological contaminants in water is summarized to understand the obstacles and challenges and explore future opportunities for advancement in water quality monitoring.

Keywords: image processing; in situ detection; inorganic and organic pollutants; lab-on-a-chip; micro-total analytical system; water contaminants; water quality monitoring.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Schematic representation of microfluidics applications integrated with different techniques for the detection of common contaminants in water [Created with BioRender.com].
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
(A) Microfluidic chip designs with one or more inlets and one outlet, and different flow geometries; straight channel, Y- and T-shaped channel. (B) Reynold’s number (Re) characterizes fluid flow in the microfluidic channels. The Re is classified into either laminar or turbulent. In laminar flow, fluid has distinct streamlines and moves in parallel to the flow direction. In turbulent flow, fluid chaotically flows with no distinct [Created with BioRender.com].
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Application of paper-based microfluidic devices for the detection of water quality. (A) Development of microfluidic paper-based analytical devices and integration with smartphone-app for simultaneous and fast detection of cross-type multiple water quality parameters including Ni(II), Cu(II), Fe(III), NO3-. and pH (Xiong et al., 2022). Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society. (B) Designing of capillary-driven microfluidic device combined with paper for quantification of various metals in water using a smartphone camera and ImageJ software to measure the color intensities (Aryal et al., 2023). Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society (ACS). (C) Microfluidic paper-based colorimetric devices decorated by silver particles for the detection of hydrazine in real samples through UV-visible spectroscopy without the requirement for pre-treatment steps (Ghaseminasab et al., 2023). Copyright 2023, with permission from Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
(A) Fabrication of a glass microfluidic device with a diamond-like carbon-coated channel surface to measure residual chlorine in tap water Via N,N-diethyl-p-phenylenediamine (DPD) method (Tazawa et al., 2023). Copyright 2023, with permission from Springer Nature. (B) Fabrication of a fiber optical microfluidic sensor chip with PDMS and Au@Ag NPs to detect cyanide ions (CN) in real-time by monitoring changes in the fiber cladding refractive index (Phuong et al., 2023). Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society (ACS). (C) In situ analyzer for seawater total alkalinity and the design of the PMMA microfluidic chip with channels and inlaid optical cells (Sonnichsen et al., 2023). Reproduced with permission from Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society (ACS).
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
(A) Development of nanoporous, interdigitated electrodes on a standard glass slide to develop a microfluidic flow-through platform for PFOS detection using specific affinity-based interactions between MOF-based receptor and PFOS (Cheng et al., 2020). Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society (ACS). (B) Fabricated two-layer PMMA-based microfluidic chip for microplastic analysis allowed sample digestion, filtration and counting processes within single platform with the preprogrammed sequence. Fluorescence microscope and video processing software were used to quantify microplastic in river water sediment and fish gastrointestinal tract contents (Zhang et al., 2023). Reproduced with permission from Elsevier. (C) A PDMS microfluidic device featuring sieve-like structures designed specifically for on-site, label-free identification of small-sized microplastics in seawater (Gong et al., 2023). Copyright 2023, with permission from Springer Nature. (D) Development of micro-fine bubbles under T-type flow-focused PDMS microfluidic chip combined with ozone chemiluminescence for COD detection system (Li et al., 2022). Copyright 2021, MDPI. (E) Design of multiplexed PMMA microfluidic device for detection of COD, ammonia, nitrogen, nickel, chromium and phosphate. Color intensities were quantified on the chip using cell phone at different concentrations (Jiang et al., 2020). Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society (ACS).
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
(A) Paper-based microfluidic for organophosphorus pesticides detection. The device consists of three separate zones, one for sampling and two transport channels separated by a gap where the acetylcholinesterase and acetylcholine chloride solutions are deposited in each one, and a detection zone containing the pH indicator. A purple color and yellow color were produced in the presence and absence of the pesticide, respectively (Fernández-Ramos et al., 2020). Copyright 2020, Elsevier. (B, C) Designing, printing, and baking the printed paper to produce paper-based microfluidic device for Atrazine detection in water. Silver and gold nanoparticles decorated the sensing area and in the presence of the pesticide a color developed. The color intensity was measured by smartphone camera and ImageJ at different concentrations of atrazine pesticide (Moulahoum, 2023). Copyright 2023, American Chemical Society (ACS).
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
(A) Fabrication of a nylon membrane hybrid portable centrifugal microfluidic device to detect live bacteria in water. WST-8 was used for colorimetric detection of microbial metabolism and data analyzed visually or recorded with a smartphone camera and then processed by ImageJ software (Chang et al., 2023). Reproduced with permission from Elsevier. (B) Phage-based microfluidic platform made with polycarbonate enclosures and polyvinylidene difluoride membrane, nitrocellulose membrane, hydrophobic membrane, for filtering Escherichia coli cells from water samples, for concentrating reporter, and for venting the device channels, respectively (Alonzo et al., 2022). Reproduced with permission from American Chemical Society (ACS). (C) The developed system composed of two microfluidic devices. The first glass microfluidic chip to produce water droplets and to isolated Escherichia coli into individual droplets containing a DNAzyme mixture. After bacterial cell lysis by heating, the droplets passed through the second PDMS/PMMA microfluidic device for collecting the fluorescence signal from the DNAzyme sensor of single Escherichia coli lysed encapsulated inside the droplets (Rauf et al., 2022). Copyright 2022, MDPI.
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Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was funded by the College of graduate studies (form ID 409), and in part by the Research & Graduate Studies (Research Project No. 23021440140), University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.