Portability: MANUAL handling, vehicle mounting and use in remote locations are common considerations for field instruments, which necessitates their portability. Weight and size are key considerations in instrument design. Miniaturization is a way to make them truly portable. Rapid developments in technologies such as lab-on-a-chip and micro-engineering have allowed a number of methods that were previously laboratory-based to be miniaturized to a point of man-portability. However, it is not always possible to miniaturize an instrument without compromising its performance. The frequently overlooked world-to-chip problem [3] hinders the road to genuine miniaturization.