細胞扮演著生命最小單位的重要角色，個體的特殊性皆來自細胞的影響，而對細胞的研究提供吾人對生命特徵功能之了解。生物分子或次細胞的物質，若能透過高效率和高敏感度的檢測分析，進而解釋一些重要的生理過程，將有助於了解其中奧秘。由於以群體細胞平均行為表現的傳統實驗方式，具有無法得知單一細胞處於某週期狀態下的行為表現之缺點，也無法滿足對環境刺激反應敏感或罕見的細胞研究需求，因此科學家開發了對單一細胞研究的各種技術。奈微米流體系統搭配與生物分子尺寸相符的微小元件，有助於操控單一細胞或其濃度等級之生物分子，同時利用奈米尺度的效應，縮短樣本與感測器的反應時間，將有效提升檢測的靈敏度。

Cells play a significant role as the fundamental unit of life, and studies on cell contribute to show the specific feature of life. Highly efficient and sensitive detection of the biomolecules or subcellular substances released from a single cell explains some important physiological processes. For single cell analysis not only complementary
information of complex biological systems but also the actual functional interaction of biomolecules on the cellular and tissue structural basis can be revealed. Nano-microfluidic devices exhibit the possibility of integrating a variety of cellular or subcellular operations in the nanometre scale, it further allows the analysis with improved
performance, throughput, parallelization and automation. For sensitive detection it is important to scale down the size of the channels so that they approach the relevant length scales of the molecules of interest.