The demand for automated workflows has significantly increased within academia, as they offer improvements in experimental efficiency, reproducibility and data quality. By minimising human intervention, automated systems reduce the potential for user error and enable high-throughput experiments, which are particularly valuable for large-scale or repetitive studies. Lab-on-a-chip technologies are adopted as a cost-effective and flexible strategy in research areas such as enzyme kinetics and membrane biophysics. These platforms lower reagent consumption and facilitate precise control over experimental conditions.
In this thesis, a millifluidic chip was first employed to study the permeability of a model membrane using droplet interface bilayers, followed by the integration of a model physical barrier to mimic more biologically relevant conditions.
This thesis also presents a low-cost, automated, custom-built flow-controlled spectrometer, equipped with a millifluidic mixing chip. The chip enables homogeneous on-chip mixing while the mini spectrometer allows real-time absorbance and fluorescence measurements. The system was utilised to investigate the Sphingomyelinase-induced degradation of lipid membranes, in which the enzyme catalyses the hydrolysis of sphingomyelin and converts it into ceramide. Various factors influencing the reaction were systematically examined, including enzyme concentrations, lipid composition, and the acyl chain length of SM. In addition to spectroscopic analysis, microscopy was employed to visualise membrane morphology changes, offering deeper insights into the enzymatic reaction. Finally, the system was integrated with an iterative feedback loop designed to optimise the reaction conditions. These results contribute to various research areas by providing a comprehensive and accessible platform for studying membrane biophysics through the integration of low-cost millifluidic technology and real-time spectroscopic analysis.