Toward a Soft Microfluidic System: Concept and Preliminary Developments

摘要

In recent years, the device concept called Integrated Microfluidic Circuits (IMCs) has been proposed in the microfluidic literature. The IMCs include fluids, rigid channels and flexible membranes, and their behavior is coordinated with the membrane deformation and fluid flow. The IMC allows the control function being realized by the fluid itself, like the concept of self-control. In this paper, we generalize the concept of IMC to the concept called soft microfluidic system (SMS). In SMS, there are no electronics, and materials are soft, meaning the mechanical property of materials is close to that of materials of biological body. A SMS can exhibit the robotic behaviors, namely movement, sensing, actuation, and control. In this paper, we further propose two concepts upon the SMS concept. The first concept is a switch valve which is continuous in that the switching occurs between two fluid configurations: Configuration 1 (flow rate x1 for flow 1 & flow rate x2 for flow 2), Configuration 2 (flow rate x2 for flow 1 & flow rate x1 for flow 2), where x1%+x2%=100%. The second concept is regarding the structure of a microfluidic system, that is, horizontal stacking of multiple layers rather than vertical stacking of multiple layers SMS. This paper explores these concepts and provide justification of the feasibility of implementing these concepts.