Institut de Génie Biomédical, Polytechnique Montréal, Montréal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada.
Department of Engineering Physics, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Jan 12;118(2). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2019248118.
An increasing number of applications in biology, chemistry, and material sciences require fluid manipulation beyond what is possible with current automated pipette handlers, such as gradient generation, interface reactions, reagent streaming, and reconfigurability. In this article, we introduce the pixelated chemical display (PCD), a scalable strategy for highly parallel, reconfigurable liquid handling on open surfaces. Microfluidic "pixels" are created when a fluid stream injected above a surface is confined by neighboring identical fluid streams, forming a repeatable flow unit that can be used to tesselate a surface. PCDs generating up to 144 pixels are fabricated and used to project "chemical moving pictures" made of several reagents over both immersed and dry surfaces, without any physical barrier or wall. This work distinguishes itself from previous work in open-space microfluidics by presenting a device architecture where the number of confinement areas can be scaled to any size. Furthermore, it challenges the open-space tenet that the aspiration rate must be higher than the injection rate for reagents to be confined. Overall, this article sets the foundation for massively parallel surface processing using continuous flow streams and showcases possibilities in both wet and dry surface patterning and roll-to-roll processes.
越来越多的生物学、化学和材料科学应用需要超越当前自动化移液管处理能力的流体操作，例如梯度生成、界面反应、试剂流和可重构性。在本文中，我们介绍了像素化化学显示器（PCD），这是一种可扩展的策略，用于在开放表面上进行高度并行、可重构的液体处理。当在表面上方注入的流体流被相邻的相同流体流限制时，就会形成微流体“像素”，形成可重复使用的流动单元，可用于平铺表面。我们制造了多达 144 个像素的 PCD，并将其用于在浸入式和干燥表面上投影由几种试剂组成的“化学动态图像”，而无需任何物理障碍或墙壁。这项工作与开放式微流控领域的先前工作不同，提出了一种设备架构，其中限制区域的数量可以扩展到任意大小。此外，它挑战了开放式微流控的一个原则，即试剂被限制的抽吸速度必须高于注入速度。总的来说，本文为使用连续流股进行大规模并行表面处理奠定了基础，并展示了在湿表面和干表面图案化以及卷对卷工艺方面的可能性。
