Werner Erik M, Lam Benjamin X, Hui Elliot E
Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA.
Micromachines (Basel). 2022 Oct 20;13(10):1784. doi: 10.3390/mi13101784.
Microfluidic droplet generation typically entails an initial stabilization period on the order of minutes, exhibiting higher variation in droplet volume until the system reaches monodisperse production. The material lost during this period can be problematic when preparing droplets from limited samples such as patient biopsies. Active droplet generation strategies such as antiphase peristaltic pumping effectively reduce stabilization time but have required off-chip control hardware that reduces system accessibility. We present a fully integrated device that employs on-chip pneumatic logic to control phase-optimized peristaltic pumping. Droplet generation stabilizes in about a second, with only one or two non-uniform droplets produced initially.
微流控液滴生成通常需要几分钟量级的初始稳定期，在系统达到单分散生产之前，液滴体积变化较大。当从有限的样本（如患者活检组织）制备液滴时，这一时期损失的材料可能会成为问题。诸如反相蠕动泵浦等主动液滴生成策略有效地减少了稳定时间，但需要片外控制硬件，这降低了系统的可及性。我们展示了一种完全集成的设备，该设备采用片上气动逻辑来控制相位优化的蠕动泵浦。液滴生成在大约一秒内稳定下来，最初仅产生一两个不均匀的液滴。
