Andreas Grimmer, Werner Haselmayr, Robert Wille,
"Automatic Droplet Sequence Generation for Microfluidic Networks with Passive Droplet Routing"
, in IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD), IEEE, 2018, ISSN: 1937-4151
Original Titel:
Automatic Droplet Sequence Generation for Microfluidic Networks with Passive Droplet Routing
Sprache des Titels:
Englisch
Original Kurzfassung:
Droplet-based microfluidic devices are a
well-established and highly potential Labs-on-Chip (LoC)
technology as droplets are especially suited to encapsulate
biological samples like cells, proteins, or DNA. These droplets
are injected in a continuous phase and flow through closed
microchannels to modules executing operations on the droplets ?
eventually realizing a (bio-)chemical experiment. Moreover,
this technology even allows for the realization of multiple
experiments on a single device by letting droplets take different
paths through the microfluidic network. This requires, however,
a mechanism to route the droplets along these paths. To this end,
the concept of passive droplet routing has been suggested which
entirely avoids complex valves or switches and, instead, realizes
the routing by exploiting the hydrodynamic effect that a droplet
will always flow along the path with the highest volumetric flow
rate. Since droplets themselves affect the volumetric flow rate,
a dedicated sequence of droplets can define what path is taken
and, hence, what experiment is executed. However, determining
such a droplet sequence is a non-trivial task, as it is non-obvious
how much droplets are needed, when to inject them, and how
they are interacting. In this work, we are addressing this issue
by providing, for the first time, an automatic method for the
generation of droplet sequences realizing the desired experiments
on a given network. Evaluations confirm the practicability of
the proposed solution. Moreover, the suitability of the obtained
droplet sequences is additionally validated through simulations
on the 1D analysis model.
Sprache der Kurzfassung:
Englisch
Journal:
IEEE Transactions on Computer Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems (TCAD)
Forschungs-