  The miniaturization and integration of electronic circuitry has not only made
the enormous increase in performance of semiconductor devices possible but also
spawned a myriad of new products and applications ranging from a cellular phone
to a personal computer. Similarly, the miniaturization and integration of
chemical and biological processes will revolutionize life sciences. Drug design
and diagnostics in the genomic era require reliable and cost effective high
throughput technologies which can be integrated and allow for a massive
parallelization. Microfluidics is the core technology to realize such
miniaturized laboratories with feature sizes on a submillimeter scale. Here, we
report on a novel microfluidic technology meeting the basic requirements for a
microfluidic processor analogous to those of its electronic counterpart: Cost
effective production, modular design, high speed, scalability and
programmability.
