Grimmer Andreas, Frank Philipp, Ebner Philipp, Häfner Sebastian, Richter Andreas, Wille Robert
Institute for Integrated Circuits, Johannes Kepler University Linz, 4040 Linz, Austria.
Chair of Microsystems, Institute of Semiconductors and Microsystems, Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany.
Micromachines (Basel). 2018 Nov 27;9(12):625. doi: 10.3390/mi9120625.
Microfluidics continues to bring innovation to the life sciences. It stimulates progress by enabling new ways of research in biology, chemistry, and biotechnology. However, when designing a microfluidic device, designers have to conduct many tasks by hand-resulting in labor-intensive processes. In particular, when drawing the design of the device, designers have to handle re-occurring entities. Meander channels are one example, which are frequently used in different platforms but always have to fit the respective application and design rules. This work presents an online tool which is capable of generating user-defined, two-dimensional designs of fluidic meander channels facilitating fluidic hydrodynamic resistances. The tool implements specific design rules as it considers the user's needs and fabrication requirements. The compliance of the meanders generated by the proposed tool is confirmed by fabricating the generated designs and comparing whether the resulting devices indeed realize the desired specification. To this end, two case studies are considered: first, the realization of dedicated fluidic resistances and, second, the realization of dedicated mixing ratios of fluids. The results demonstrate the versatility of the tool regarding application and technology. Overall, the freely accessible tool with its flexibility and simplicity renders manual drawing of meanders obsolete and, hence, allows for a faster, more straightforward design process.
微流控技术持续为生命科学带来创新。它通过开启生物学、化学及生物技术领域新的研究方式来推动进步。然而，在设计微流控设备时，设计人员必须手动执行许多任务，这导致流程劳动强度大。特别是在绘制设备设计图时，设计人员必须处理反复出现的实体。蜿蜒通道就是一个例子，它在不同平台中经常使用，但总是必须符合各自的应用和设计规则。这项工作展示了一种在线工具，该工具能够生成用户定义的二维流体蜿蜒通道设计，以促进流体动力学阻力。该工具在考虑用户需求和制造要求的同时实施特定的设计规则。通过制造生成的设计并比较所得设备是否确实实现了所需规格，证实了所提出工具生成的蜿蜒通道的合规性。为此，考虑了两个案例研究：第一，实现专用流体阻力；第二，实现流体的专用混合比。结果证明了该工具在应用和技术方面的多功能性。总体而言，这个免费使用的工具因其灵活性和简易性，使手动绘制蜿蜒通道变得过时，从而实现了更快、更直接的设计过程。
