Development of a rapid manufacturable microdroplet generator with pneumatic control
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TECHNICAL PAPER
Development of a rapid manufacturable microdroplet generator with pneumatic control Gnanesh Nagesh1 • Hualong Wang1 • David S.-K. Ting1 • Mohammed Jalal Ahamed1 Received: 24 September 2020 / Accepted: 29 September 2020 Ó Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract This paper presents a T-junction microdroplet generator equipped with a pneumatic actuation for controlling the droplet size. The multi-layer device is compatible with rapid manufacturing using a desktop-based laser cutter to fabricate the fluidic and pneumatic layers. A T-junction fluidic layer sits at the bottom and the control layer consists of a pneumatic chamber, as well as inlet and outlet channels are placed at the top. Our results with pneumatic control showed that the generated droplet size is inversely proportional to the pressure inside the pneumatic chamber. Pneumatic pressure of up to 0.4 MPa showed a 38% reduction in droplet size compared to without control. The droplet size can additionally be regulated by controlling the relative flow rates of the continuous and dispersed fluid. Pneumatic actuation is advantageous, as it does not require additional fluid usage and the flow rate does not need to be ramped up to decrease the droplet size. The device presented in this paper with pneumatic control and fabrication ease provides an attractive method for microdroplet manipulation.
1 Introduction 3D-printed and rapid manufacturable microfluidic droplet generators have received much attention due to recent demonstrations of their precision over the droplet size, quick production time, low-cost manufacturing, and control of the droplet volume (Nguyen et al. 2019). Micro droplet generators are used in many biochemical applications, including drug delivery (Xiao et al. 2013; Hsu et al. 2017), DNA structure analysis (Wang 2008), biomolecule synthesis (Zhang et al. 2015), microreactors (Tirandazi and Hidrovo 2018), and diagnostics (Shembekar et al. 2016). Conventional microdroplet generator fabrication is commonly carried out with semiconductor-based fabrication involving photolithography, dry/wet chemical etch, and bonding, which requires specialized microfabrication equipment and techniques (Ahamed et al. 2010, 2013; Mao et al. 2019; Demirci and Toner 2006). To reduce fabrication cost and production time, there are various simple and cost-effective alternative fabrication methods were explored, such as 3D-printing(Agarwal et al. 2020), liquid
molding (Yang et al. 2017), rapid manufacturing (Donvito et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2016; Jiao et al. 2019), and laser cutters/engravers. These have success in terms of both reducing cost and manufacturing small microscale features. They have propelled the development of different types of droplet generator designs. Among different droplet generator designs, T-junction (Glawdel et al. 2012; Loizou et al. 2013; Zeng et al. 2015; Charlot et al. 2015; Fan et al. 2019), flow-focusing (Chen et al. 2011; Ghosh et al. 2019; Wu et al
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