School of Mechatronical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China.
Institute of Chemical and Bioengineering, Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2017 Jan 13;7:40570. doi: 10.1038/srep40570.
Due to their ease of fabrication, facile use and low cost, ice valves have great potential for use in microfluidic platforms. For this to be possible, a rapid response speed is key and hence there is still much scope for improvement in current ice valve technology. Therefore, in this study, an ice valve with enhanced thermal conductivity and a movable refrigeration source has been developed. An embedded aluminium cylinder is used to dramatically enhance the heat conduction performance of the microfluidic platform and a movable thermoelectric unit eliminates the thermal inertia, resulting in a faster cooling process. The proposed ice valve achieves very short closing times (0.37 s at 10 μL/min) and also operates at high flow rates (1150 μL/min). Furthermore, the response time of the valve decreased by a factor of 8 when compared to current state of the art technology.
由于易于制造、使用方便且成本低，冰阀在微流控平台中具有很大的应用潜力。为了实现这一目标，快速响应速度是关键，因此当前的冰阀技术仍有很大的改进空间。因此，在本研究中，开发了一种具有增强导热性和可移动制冷源的冰阀。嵌入式铝筒可显著提高微流控平台的导热性能，可移动的热电单元消除了热惯性，从而实现更快的冷却过程。所提出的冰阀实现了非常短的关闭时间（在 10μL/min 时为 0.37s），并且还可以在高流速下运行（1150μL/min）。此外，与当前最先进的技术相比，阀的响应时间缩短了 8 倍。
