Year: 2017

Researchers from the Mace lab at Tufts University recently published an article in Scientific Reports highlighting their new open-source CAD software that is tailored for the design of paper microfluidic devices.  The software works across all OS platforms, appears fairly straightforward and user-friendly, and likely capable of covering most of the normal aspects of geometrical design for channel networks, based on examples presented.

The software is provided by the authors gratis in a laudable effort to reduce the costs associated with chip design, especially for resource-constrained environments such as schools and labs in developing countries.  The price for subscription or purchase of industry-standard CAD software can be prohibitive, easily reaching tens of thousands of dollars, and scaling with the number of users, etc.  Removing the cost of design SW breaks down a significant cost barrier to innovation for paper microfluidics, a technology that otherwise boasts very economical costs for consumable materials (paper) and fabrication (wax printing with commercially available printers).

Research from Santosh Pandey‘s lab at Iowa State U, published in Lab on a Chip and highlighted in Cytofluidix, shows actuation of paper microfluidics switches/valves with effective, fast performance.  Several different configurations were demonstrated, including single-pole-single-throw (normally open and normally closed), single-pole-double-throw, by analogy to electrical switch terminology.  The switches appear to actuate in seconds, which is suitable for many paper microfluidics applications.  A video of the switches in action can be viewed on YouTube.

Several key advantages come to mind with this advance.  Paper microfluidics has simplicity, low cost manufacture and portability amongst its key attributes, but these are less credible if the devices also require expensive, power-intensive peripheral hardware for e.g. fluid movement, valve actuation, detector operation, communications, etc.  Implementation of this technology in a commercial product might reduce or eliminate the need for expensive pumps and valves (and accompanying electrical power consumption) for fluid flow and valving on a device.  This could enable very low cost analysis applications targeting harsh or remote environments.

New research from Ian Wong‘s group at Brown University published in Lab on a Chip and featured in a Technology Networks article shows 3-D printed microfluidic devices with on-demand degradation of substrate materials.  Not only does this allow for easy fabrication of complex structures, but also allows for them to be controllably modified ‘on the fly’.  The key is in the use of reversibly photopolymerisable hydrogels with ionic cross-linkers.  Cross-linkers can then be removed with chelating agents.  The stiffness and degradation kinetics are controllable by the choice of metal cation for the ionic cross-linker.  Both the sodium alginate ionic cross-linking polymer and chelating agents chosen appear to be biocompatible with the human mammary cells used in the study.

While normally used to directly create the microfluidic structures, the reversible gels were also used in a second approach to create complex moulds that are removed after a second polymer forms around the reversible gel.

The technology may potentially be applied as an adaptive or stimulus responsive material for use in sensing, actuation, drug delivery, cell migration monitoring for wounds or cancer, artificial tissue scaffolding or other applications.

An interesting  Cytofluidix post highlights recent work by a collaborative team of researchers at both Singapore’s A*STAR’s SIMTech facility and Nanyang Technological University, and at the Seoul National University of Science and Technology, based on their article published in the Journal of Materials Processing Technology.

The focus is on addressing the drawbacks encountered with ultrasonic welding as a bonding technique for plastic microfluidic devices.  Ultrasonic welding is attractive because it lends itself to batch processing of microfluidic devices, and employs relatively established, inexpensive and compact equipment.  As currently used, however, ultrasonic welding is often not up to the task, from a quality perspective, since uneven energy distribution may distort or melt the microfabricated structures, and air bubbles may also be incorporated.

According to Gary Sum Huan Ng from the SIMTech group, the team’s innovation is to introduce a sandwiched composite film between the two polymer substrates that are to be bonded.  The film contains PMMA microspheres within a PDMS matrix, and the microspheres melt during ultrasonic welding, and prevent bubble formation and substrate material flow.

New research from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Harvard Medical School, published in Lab on a Chip, shows a microfabricated cardiac sensing platform that can monitor tissue adhesion, electrophysiology and contractility on a single device.  It’s used to test the effectiveness of new cardiac drugs.  Human heart cells are grown on the electrode-array chip, and then their cellular beating is tracked via electrical signals sensed by the interdigitated electrodes.

The use of such devices could yield significant advantages for cardiac drug development by signalling problems with a given drug candidate early in the process, long before clinical trials.  The technology may also obviate the need for animal testing.

Very interesting technology from µFraction8 based at Heriot Watt University in Scotland may help address sustainable farming approaches for food, animal feed and pharmaceuticals bioproduction.  Sustainable approaches can use 20x less land area.  Post bioreactor dewatering comprises ~40% of the cost of bioproduction; µFraction8’s microfluidic devices can potentially reduce the cost of dewatering by 75%, which would have a dramatic impact on viability.  See Akzo Nobel article for more details.