Selected papers from the 3rd European Conference on Microfluidics: µFlu’12

The Third European Conference on Microfluidics (μFlu’12) was held in Heidelberg, Germany, in December 8–10, 2012, under the sponsorship of the Hydrotechnic Society of France (SHF), the Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, the University of Toulouse and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. This event has gathered 252 participants from 33 countries. During three days, 174 communications have been presented in 16 thematic sessions including liquid microflows, gas microflows, microsensors and in-situ analytics, fluidic microactuators and micromixing, microfabrication techniques for microfluidic systems, convective micro heat transfer, micro chemical engineering, lab-on-a-chip, electrokinetic microflows, microdroplets management, microflows in biological systems and bioengineering, multi-phase flows in microsystems, and microflow visualization. Two special sessions have been devoted to industrial applications of microfluidics and to nanofluidics. This special issue of Microsystem Technologies focuses the attention of the readers on a selection of nine works representative of the research advances in microfluidics presented during the Conference.