The basic idea of microfluidic biochips is to integrate assay operations such as detection, as well as sample pre-treatment and sample preparation on one chip.
The fabrication of microarrays is non-trivial and is a major economic and technological hurdle that may ultimately decide the success of future biochip platforms.
The difference from conventional immunoassays is that the capture ligands are covalently attached to the surface of the biochip in an ordered array rather than in solution.
The rapid technological advances of the biochemistry and semiconductor fields in the 1980s led to the large-scale development of biochips in the 1990s.
