Lee Eunjung, Kim Byeongyeon, Choi Sungyoung
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Kyung Hee University Yongin-si Gyeonggi-do 17104 Republic of Korea.
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Hanyang University Seoul 04763 Republic of Korea
RSC Adv. 2019 Dec 17;9(71):41877-41885. doi: 10.1039/c9ra08368e. eCollection 2019 Dec 13.
Microfluidics offers great potential for biomedical applications, but the complexity, inconvenience, and low pumping equipment accessibility of operating microfluidic devices have limited their widespread use. Here we describe an open-source, programmable smart (OS) pipette as an easy-to-use, simple, handheld microfluidic pump that overcomes the major limitations of previous commercial- or research-level pumps for microfluidics. The OS pipette pumps fluid into a microfluidic device by precisely controlling the position of the plunger of a positive-displacement micropipette with stepper motor control. The intuitive pumping mechanism of the OS pipette enables the novel features of simple fabrication, straightforward device operation, and precise, predictable, and programmable flow-rate generation as an open-source pumping tool. Controlling the OS pipette using an open-source microcontroller board not only allows straightforward generation of constant flow rates with simple source code commands, but also permits varying flow rates to be programmed (including stepwise increase and decrease of the flow rate over time, and flow-rate pulse generation). We successfully validate the OS pipette's capabilities for portable microfluidic cell separation and counting. The OS pipette has promise as a rapidly evolving and potentially transformative pumping tool that freely allows unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction, and modification even by non-expert users, and further enables diverse usages, even beyond microfluidics.
微流控技术在生物医学应用方面具有巨大潜力，但操作微流控设备的复杂性、不便性以及泵设备的低可达性限制了它们的广泛应用。在此，我们描述了一种开源、可编程的智能（OS）移液器，它是一种易于使用、简单的手持式微流控泵，克服了以前商业或研究级微流控泵的主要局限性。OS移液器通过步进电机控制精确地控制正位移微量移液器柱塞的位置，将流体泵入微流控设备。OS移液器直观的泵送机制使其具有简单制造、直接的设备操作以及精确、可预测和可编程流速生成等新颖特性，成为一种开源泵送工具。使用开源微控制器板控制OS移液器，不仅可以通过简单的源代码命令直接生成恒定流速，还可以对变化的流速进行编程（包括随时间逐步增加和减少流速以及生成流速脉冲）。我们成功验证了OS移液器在便携式微流控细胞分离和计数方面的能力。OS移液器有望成为一种快速发展且具有潜在变革性的泵送工具，它甚至允许非专业用户自由地无限制使用、分发、复制和修改，并且甚至在微流控技术之外还能实现多种用途。
