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Modular component design for portable microfluidic devices

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Abstract

A new modular design concept for microfluidic devices is proposed and demonstrated in this study. We designed three key modular microfluidic components: pumps, valves, and reservoirs, and demonstrated that a microfluidic device with specific functions can be easily assembled with those key modular components. Our pumps are man-powerable so that the assembled microfluidic devices require no any other power sources like expensive syringe pumps or air compressors. This feature makes the assembled microfluidic devices completely portable. We also combined our assembled device with other existing mixing microchannels to serve as the mixing and loading system in polymerase chain reaction experiment to amplify DNA successfully. This result shows that those modular components can be integrated into other microchannels, implying great potential applications of the modular design.

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Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the financial support of the National Science Council of Taiwan, Republic of China under Contract No. NSC96-2628-E-002-197-MY3.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Marine Engineering, Taipei College of Maritime Technology, Taipei, 11174, Taiwan

    Dar-Sun Liou

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, Taipei, 10617, Taiwan

    Yi-Fan Hsieh, Long-Sheng Kuo & Ping-Hei Chen

  3. Department of Mechanical and Computer-Aided Engineering, St. John’s University, Taipei, 25135, Taiwan

    Chin-Ting Yang

Authors
  1. Dar-Sun Liou
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  2. Yi-Fan Hsieh
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  3. Long-Sheng Kuo
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  4. Chin-Ting Yang
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  5. Ping-Hei Chen
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Correspondence to Ping-Hei Chen.

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Liou, DS., Hsieh, YF., Kuo, LS. et al. Modular component design for portable microfluidic devices. Microfluid Nanofluid 10, 465–474 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-010-0681-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-010-0681-5

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