This website uses cookies to give you the best user experience. If you continue
without changing your settings we'll assume you are happy to receive all RSC cookies.
You can change your cookie settings by navigating to our Privacy and Cookies page and following the instructions. These instructions
are also obtainable from the privacy link at the bottom of any RSC page.
Caltech Microfluidic Foundry, Kavli Nanoscience Institute, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, USA
E-mail: saurabhv@caltech.edu
b
Summer Undergraduate Research Program, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, USA
c
Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Blvd., Pasadena, USA
Lab Chip, 2008,8, 1530-1535
DOI:
10.1039/B804515A
Received
17 Mar 2008,
Accepted
03 Jun 2008
First published online
09 Jul 2008
Recently, sophisticated fluidic circuits with hundreds of independent valves have been built by using multi-layer soft-lithography to mold elastomers. However, this shrinking of microfluidic circuits has not been matched by a corresponding miniaturization of the actuation and interfacing elements that control the circuits; while the fluidic circuits are small (10–100 micron wide channels), the Medusa's head-like interface, consisting of external pneumatic solenoids and tubing or mechanical pins to control each independent valve, is larger by one to four orders of magnitude ( mm to cm). Consequently, the dream of using large scale integration in microfluidics for portable, high throughput applications has been stymied. By combining multi-layer soft-lithography with shape memory alloys (SMA), we demonstrate electronically activated microfluidic components such as valves, pumps, latches and multiplexers, that are assembled on printed circuit boards (PCBs). Thus, high density, electronically controlled microfluidic chips can be integrated alongside standard opto-electronic components on a PCB. Furthermore, we introduce the idea of microfluidic states, which are combinations of valve states, and analogous to instruction sets of integrated circuit (IC) microprocessors. Microfluidic states may be represented in hardware or software, and we propose a control architecture that results in logarithmic reduction of external control lines. These developments bring us closer to building microfluidic circuits that resemble electronic ICs both physically, as well as in their abstract model.
Fetching data from CrossRef. This may take some time to load.