Nanomaterials meet microfluidics: Improved analytical methods and high-throughput synthetic approaches

In recent years, both nanomaterials (NMs) and microfluidics have unprecedented development. NMs with specific morphologies and versatile surface functionalization offer new opportunities for developing ultrasensitive and selective microfluidic methods. With some inherent merits, microfluidic chip has introduced a new avenue for NM synthesis. The combination of NMs with microfluidics provides improved methods alone with superior synthetic efficacies. Therefore, it is necessary to summarize research advances in NM-based microfluidic methods and microfluidic-based NM synthesis. In this review, NM-based microfluidic methods are categorized into optical, electrical, magnetic and acoustic methods according to the integrated techniques while microfluidic-based NM synthesis is summarized to be spherical (0D), one dimension (1D), two dimensions (2D) and three dimensions (3D) NMs according to the sizes of NMs synthesized on microfluidic chips. The ultimate goals are to stimulate the design of exquisite microfluidic platforms and efficient synthetic strategies of NMs for biochemical analysis. Graphical Abstract. Nanomaterials (NMs) offer new opportunities for developing ultrasensitive and selective microfluidic platforms integrating different techniques. Microfluidic chip has introduced a new avenue for synthesizing NMs with different dimensions. • Nanomaterials offer new opportunities for developing ultrasensitive and selective microfluidic methods. • Microfluidic chip has introduced a new avenue for nanomaterial synthesis. • Nanomaterial-based microfluidic methods have been summarized and categorized into optical, electrical, magnetic and acoustic techniques. • Nanomaterials synthesized on microfluidic platforms are reviewed according to their sizes and classified to be spherical, 1D, 2D and 3D ones.