Evaluation of food μPADs with the new tech perspectives and future prospects

Abstract

Food microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (µPADs) are powerful tools to create total analysis systems and have long been demonstrated to be useful for safety and quality applications. Thanks to new technological innovations food µPADs offer exciting new possibilities. This review introduces how µPADs are obtained from chromatography, filter, or office papers and detect analytes from a food sample. We introduce the most current developments in the use of µPADs with an emphasis on paper types, adapted new technologies, and detection limits. Classifications are also made on food µPADs according to applied innovations and adapted novel technologies. In the first section, simple forms of µPADs for the detection of pathogen, mycotoxin, pesticides, and other food components are discussed with technical details. Then, we introduce multisensing approaches for high throughput analysis and a concise summary will be given. In the case of three-dimensional (3D) µPADs, the use of 3D is discussed and compared to 2D µPADs in terms of its advantageous with the example of a food colorant test device. In the following section, smartphone adoption to µPADs is introduced in detail with eight different assay examples. Centrifugal platform for nickel assay is demonstrated as an enabling approach with shortened assay times by rotational velocity. The potential of user-friendly hybrid devices is also summarized in the last part. Finally, we present an outlook to underline the opportunities created by smartphone-based and intelligent µPADs for food safety and quality with real success perspectives.