Kazuma Mawatari

Engineering using liquids confined in channels 10-1000 nm in dimension, or "extended-nanofluidics," is the next target of microfluidic science. Liquid properties at this scale were unrevealed until recently because of the lack of fundamental technologies for investigating these ultrasmall spaces. In this article, the fundamental technologies are reviewed, and the emerging science and technology in the extended-nanospace are discussed.

We have developed a thermal lens microscope for liquid-phase and surface microanalyses. By applying the thermal lens microscope to particle detection, we succeeded in detecting a pulsed photothermal signal from single-nanometer-sized particles in liquid and counting them individually. The samples were polystyrene latex particles (190 and 80 nm in diameter) and colloidal Ag particles (10 nm in diameter). To verify that the detected pulsed signals corresponded to the single-particle photothermal e

Cell analysis and clinical diagnosis systems are now becoming the largest field of application for microchip-based analytical systems. Technological advantages include: small volume, fast analysis time, highly integrated analytical functions, easy operation and small size. For these purposes, basic methodologies for general micro-integration and basic technologies, including fluidic control and ultrasensitive detection, are required. In this review, we introduce our approach to the general integ

Analytical technologies of ultrasmall volume liquid, in particular femtoliter to attoliter liquid, is essential for single-cell and single-molecule analysis, which is becoming highly important in biology and medical diagnosis. Nanofluidic chips will be a powerful tool to realize chemical processes for such a small volume sample. However, a technical challenge exists in fluidic control, which is femtoliter to attoliter liquid generation in air and handling for further chemical analysis. Integrati