Issue 2, 2019

Flow stabilizer on a syringe tip for hand-powered microfluidic sample injection

Abstract

Precise, portable, low-cost sample injection is strongly demanded for use in point-of-care testing devices in resource-poor settings; however, current microfluidic sample injection techniques are often expensive, bulky and electricity-powered. To address this issue, we propose a novel syringe flow-stabilizer for hand-powered, precise, continuous-flow microfluidic sample injection. Our syringe flow-stabilizer applies the principle of passive flow-resistance compensation to stabilize the unstable sample flow and has the special advantages of easy-to-use, simple structure, low cost and high stability. The flow stabilizing performance of the stabilizer is characterized via a series of experiments and the results show that our stabilizer is capable of outputting a constant flow rate up to several milliliters per minute under a low threshold pressure. Finally, the fabricated syringe flow-stabilizer is integrated with an inertial microfluidic cell concentrator for high-throughput continuous concentration of trace blood cells from large-volume biofluids. The use of our stabilizer makes the concentration performance totally independent of operation. We envision wide applications of our syringe flow-stabilizer as a hand-powered sample injection unit in various point-of-care testing devices in resource-poor settings.

Graphical abstract: Flow stabilizer on a syringe tip for hand-powered microfluidic sample injection

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
04 Okt. 2018
Accepted
03 Dec. 2018
First published
04 Dec. 2018

Lab Chip, 2019,19, 214-222

Flow stabilizer on a syringe tip for hand-powered microfluidic sample injection

N. Xiang, Y. Han, Y. Jia, Z. Shi, H. Yi and Z. Ni, Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 214 DOI: 10.1039/C8LC01051J

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