1. Non-woven fabric-based microfluidic devices with hydrophobic wax barrier.
- Author
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Zhang, Jing, Qiu, Xianbo, Huang, Lei, Fan, Yiqiang, Miao, Guijun, Zhang, Lulu, Xu, Chi, Liu, Luyao, and Dong, Xiaobin
- Subjects
MICROFLUIDIC devices ,BULK solids ,WAXES ,GLASS - Abstract
This study proposed a novel method for the fabrication of non-woven based microfluidic devices with a wax hydrophobic barrier. Current microfluidic devices were fabricated with glass or polymer material, and paper is also widely used for the fabrication of low-cost microfluidic devices. The application of non-woven fabric based microfluidic devices provides a new option of bulk materials for microfluidics. Compared with the glass or polymer material used in microfluidics, non-woven fabric is low-cost, easy to process and disposable. Fluid can penetrate through the non-woven fabric material with capillary force without the requirement of external pumps. As fiber-based material, comparing with paper, non-woven fabric material is more durable with higher mechanical strength, and various types of non-woven fabric material also provide a board choice of surface chemical/physical properties for microfluidic applications. In this study, the hydrophilic non-woven fabric is chosen as the bulk material for microfluidic devices, a wax pattern transfer protocol is also proposed in this study for the deposition of hydrophobic barriers. For a demonstration of the proposed fabrication technique, a microfluidic mixer was also fabricated in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2020
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