Vasilakis, N;
Papadimitriou, KI;
Morgan, H;
Prodromakis, T;
(2017)
High-performance PCB-based capillary pumps for affordable point-of-care diagnostics.
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics
, 21
(6)
, Article 103. 10.1007/s10404-017-1935-2.
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Abstract
Capillary pumps are integral components of passive microfluidic devices. They can displace precise volumes of liquid, avoiding the need for external active components, providing a solution for sample preparation modules in Point-of-Care (PoC) diagnostic platforms. In this work, we describe a variety of high-performance capillary pump designs, suitable for the Lab-on-Printed-Circuit-Board technology (LoPCB). Pumps are fabricated entirely on Printed Circuit Board (PCB) substrates via commercially available manufacturing processes. We demonstrate the concept of LoPCB technology and detail the fabrication method of different architectures of PCB-based capillary pumps. The capillary pumps are combined with microfluidic channels of various hydraulic resistances and characterised experimentally for different micropillar shapes and minimum feature size. Their performance in terms of flow rate is reported. Due to the superhydrophilic properties of oxygen plasma treated FR-4 PCB substrate, the capillary pump flow rates are much higher (138 μL/min, for devices comprising micropillar arrays without preceding microchannel) than comparable devices based on glass, silicon or polymers. Finally, we comment on the technology’s prospects, such as incorporating more complicated microfluidic networks that can be tailored for assays.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | High-performance PCB-based capillary pumps for affordable point-of-care diagnostics |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10404-017-1935-2 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-017-1935-2 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. |
| Keywords: | Capillary pumps, Lab-on-PCB, Microfluidics, Micropillars, Point-of-care diagnostics, Resistance flow |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1572365 |
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