We made significant progress in compartmentation as well as separation in microfluidic environments achieved by thermal-initiated, reversible in situ gel polymerization.
The right figure shows the principle of a integrated microfluidic system for molecule manipulation ("H"-structures), gel separation channels and passive mixing coupled with a detection window for product analysis of chemical reactions via on-chip microgel electrophoresis.
For further information and a description of experimental results about programmable gelation and DNA-separation in a microfluidic environment, please refer to the corresponding section.