Design rules for pumping and metering of highly viscous fluids in microfluidics.

The use of fluids that are significantly more viscous than water in microfluidics has been limited due to their high resistance to flow in microscale channels. This paper reports a theoretical treatment for the flow of highly viscous fluids in deforming microfluidic channels, particularly with respect to transient effects, and discusses the implications of these effects on the design of appropriate microfluidic devices for highly viscous fluids. We couple theory describing flow in a deforming channel with design equations, both for steady-state flows and for the transient periods associated with the initial deformation and final relaxation of a channel. The results of this analysis allow us to describe these systems and also to assess the significance of different parameters on various deformation and/or transient effects. To exemplify their utility, we apply these design rules to two applications: (i) pumping highly viscous fluids for a nanolitre scale mixing application and (ii) precise metering of fluids in microfluidics.

[1]  Charles J. Choi,et al.  Microfluidic chip for combinatorial mixing and screening of assays. , 2009, Lab on a chip.

[2]  P. Veltink,et al.  The mechanical properties of the rubber elastic polymer polydimethylsiloxane for sensor applications , 1997 .

[3]  Thomas Gervais,et al.  Flow-induced deformation of shallow microfluidic channels. , 2006, Lab on a chip.

[4]  S. Quake,et al.  Microfluidics: Fluid physics at the nanoliter scale , 2005 .

[5]  Vincent Studer,et al.  Scaling properties of a low-actuation pressure microfluidic valve , 2004 .

[6]  Paul J A Kenis,et al.  Air-breathing laminar flow-based microfluidic fuel cell. , 2005, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[7]  Daniel Trouchet,et al.  Experimental study and modeling of polydimethylsiloxane peristaltic micropumps , 2005 .

[8]  A. deMello,et al.  Continuous laminar evaporation: micron-scale distillation. , 2004, Chemical communications.

[9]  Axel Scherer,et al.  Experimentally validated quantitative linear model for the device physics of elastomeric microfluidic valves. , 2007, Journal of applied physics.

[10]  Armand Ajdari,et al.  Patterning flows using grooved surfaces. , 2002, Analytical chemistry.

[11]  J. Rogers,et al.  Recent progress in soft lithography , 2005 .

[12]  S. Quake,et al.  Monolithic microfabricated valves and pumps by multilayer soft lithography. , 2000, Science.

[13]  Angeliki Tserepi,et al.  A low temperature surface modification assisted method for bonding plastic substrates , 2008 .

[14]  S. Quake,et al.  Systematic investigation of protein phase behavior with a microfluidic formulator. , 2004, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[15]  B. Hardy,et al.  The deformation of flexible PDMS microchannels under a pressure driven flow. , 2009, Lab on a chip.

[16]  I. Mezić,et al.  Chaotic Mixer for Microchannels , 2002, Science.

[17]  Sarah L Perry,et al.  Microfluidic Generation of Lipidic Mesophases for Membrane Protein Crystallization. , 2009, Crystal growth & design.

[18]  G. Whitesides,et al.  Fabrication of microfluidic systems in poly(dimethylsiloxane) , 2000, Electrophoresis.

[19]  P. Cremer,et al.  Microfluidic diffusion diluter: bulging of PDMS microchannels under pressure-driven flow , 2003 .

[20]  Stephen R. Quake,et al.  A Microfabricated Rotary Pump , 2001 .

[21]  P. Nollert,et al.  A plug-based microfluidic system for dispensing lipidic cubic phase (LCP) material validated by crystallizing membrane proteins in lipidic mesophases , 2010, Microfluidics and nanofluidics.

[22]  Brian N. Johnson,et al.  An integrated microfluidic device for influenza and other genetic analyses. , 2005, Lab on a chip.

[23]  M. Caffrey.  Crystallizing membrane proteins for structure determination: use of lipidic mesophases. , 2009, Annual review of biophysics.