Abstract
Autonomous capillary systems (CSs) are microfluidic systems inside which liquids move owing to capillary forces. CSs can in principle bring the high-performances of microfluidic-based analytical devices to near patient and environmental testing applications. In this paper, we show how wettable capillary valves can enhance CSs with novel functionalities, such as delaying and stopping liquids in microchannels. The valves employ an abruptly changing geometry of the flow path to delay a moving liquid filling front in a wettable microchannel. We show how to combine delay valves with capillary pumps, prevent shortcuts of liquid along the corners of microfluidic channels, stop liquids filling microchannels from a few seconds to over 30 min, trigger valves using two liquid fronts merging, and time a liquid using parallel microfluidic paths converging to a trigger valve. All together, these concepts should add functionality to passive microfluidic systems without departing from their initial simplicity of use.
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Acknowledgments
We thank U. Drechsler and R. Stutz for their help with the fabrication of the CSs, H. Schmid for his help with initial experiments, J. Ziegler and D. Solis for discussions and technical help, and W. Riess and P. Seidler for their continuous support. M. Z. acknowledges support from H.-J. Güntherodt and financial support from the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation.
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Zimmermann, M., Hunziker, P. & Delamarche, E. Valves for autonomous capillary systems. Microfluid Nanofluid 5, 395–402 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-007-0256-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-007-0256-2