TY - JOUR
T1 - Design and characterization of a capillary-driven and parallelized microfluidic chip for distributing a liquid plug
AU - Chen, Pin Chuan
AU - Cheng, Yan Fong
AU - Young, Kung Chia
AU - Hsieh, Hung Lin
AU - Yang, Chin Lung
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016, Korean Society for Precision Engineering and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.
Copyright:
Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/11/1
Y1 - 2016/11/1
N2 - To realize a portable, capillary-driven, and parallelized microfluidic chip, how to evenly distribute a liquid plug from the inlet to multiple daughter microchannels is a challenging task. Two approaches were adopted to generate sufficient capillary pressure to allow a liquid plug spontaneously flowing through bifurcation features, including enlarging the contact perimeter between the liquid plug and microchannel walls and applying hydrophilic coating to the microchannel walls. A 1-to-2 bifurcation microfluidic chip and a 1-to-4 bifurcation microfluidic chip were designed and fabricated on PMMA substrates for experiments. Initially red food dye was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the chips, and experiment results revealed that the 1-to-2 microfluidic chip is capable of 100% liquid splitting efficiency with a CV of 5.7% whereas the 1-to-4 microfluidic chip is capable of 83% liquid splitting efficiency with a CV of 6.7%. After successfully conducting experiments with red food dye, human whole blood and blood plasma were introduced into the 1-to-2 microfluidic chips and splitting efficiency was investigated. The experiment results showed a 33% and 67% splitting efficiency for human whole blood and blood plasma, respectively. And the lower splitting efficiency can be attributed to the complex and Non-Newtonian fluidic property of the blood.
AB - To realize a portable, capillary-driven, and parallelized microfluidic chip, how to evenly distribute a liquid plug from the inlet to multiple daughter microchannels is a challenging task. Two approaches were adopted to generate sufficient capillary pressure to allow a liquid plug spontaneously flowing through bifurcation features, including enlarging the contact perimeter between the liquid plug and microchannel walls and applying hydrophilic coating to the microchannel walls. A 1-to-2 bifurcation microfluidic chip and a 1-to-4 bifurcation microfluidic chip were designed and fabricated on PMMA substrates for experiments. Initially red food dye was used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the chips, and experiment results revealed that the 1-to-2 microfluidic chip is capable of 100% liquid splitting efficiency with a CV of 5.7% whereas the 1-to-4 microfluidic chip is capable of 83% liquid splitting efficiency with a CV of 6.7%. After successfully conducting experiments with red food dye, human whole blood and blood plasma were introduced into the 1-to-2 microfluidic chips and splitting efficiency was investigated. The experiment results showed a 33% and 67% splitting efficiency for human whole blood and blood plasma, respectively. And the lower splitting efficiency can be attributed to the complex and Non-Newtonian fluidic property of the blood.
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U2 - 10.1007/s12541-016-0181-y
DO - 10.1007/s12541-016-0181-y
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84994727967
SN - 2234-7593
VL - 17
SP - 1547
EP - 1554
JO - International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
JF - International Journal of Precision Engineering and Manufacturing
IS - 11
ER -