Soft microflow sensors.

We present a rapid prototyping method for integrating functional components in conventional PDMS microfluidic devices. We take advantage of stop-flow lithography (D. Dendukuri, S. S. Gu, D. C. Pregibon, T. A. Hatton and P. S. Doyle, Lab Chip, 2007, 7, 818)(1) to achieve the in situ fabrication of mobile and deformable elements with a controlled mechanical response. This strategy is applied to the fabrication of microflow sensors based on a deformable spring-like structure. We show that these sensors have a large dynamic range, typically 3 to 4 orders of magnitude, and that they can be scaled down to measure flows in the nl per min range. We prepared sensors with different geometries, and their flow-elongation characteristics were modeled with a simple hydrodynamic model, with good agreement between model and experiments.