Micro-chemical technology is a new frontier originating in the early 1990s. This technology focuses on the study of the chemical engineering processes in and the principles of the micro-devices and micro-systems whose characteristic length and time scale are less than hundreds of microns and hundreds of milliseconds respectively.Micro-chemical system can be divided into four sub-systems

i.e. micro-heat system

micro-reaction system

micro-separation system and micro-analysis system. Because of the small dimension of the micro-devices

the specific surface area increases

the surface effect is enhanced

and the effects of transportation (flow

heat transfer and mass transfer) lead to a remarkable increase of transfer rates

which exceed those of conventional-sized devices by 2—3 orders of magnitude. The application of micro-chemical technology can improve greatly the efficiency of process systems and decrease their volume and mass. The history

basic characteristics

research areas and developing orientation of micro-chemical technology are discussed in this paper.