Lab-on-a-chip is a device where materials are moved around on a microchip either to mix them together for chemical reactions or to analyse them to generate information.

It can also be defined as a device in which a number of chemical processes are performed in order to go from reactants to products or from sample to analysers.

Using the technology that is mainly driven by the pharmaceutical industry, a number of analyses can be carried out in parallel in a single chip using minuscule amount of samples, according to a report in `Chemical and Engineering News'.

The high performance of the chips will be particularly useful for DNA-based diagnostics and finding geneticconstituents in pharmaceutical and healthcare applications.

Mircochip-based chemical sensing devices are already being used in portable blood analysers.

Other advantages of such chips are low manufacturing, operating and maintenance costs, low power consumption, increased precision, disposability and automation, says the report.