Paper Capillary Enables Effective Sampling for Microfluidic Paper Analytical Devices

The paper capillary is introduced to enable effective sampling on microfluidic paper analytical devices. By coupling the macroscale capillary force of paper capillary and the microscale capillary forces of native paper, fluid transport can be flexibly tailored with proper design. Subsequently, a hybrid-fluid-mode paper capillary device was proposed which enables fast and reliable sampling in an arrayed form with less surface adsorption and bias for different components. The resulting device thus supports high-throughput, quantitative, and repeatable assays by manual operation. With all these merits, multiplex analysis of ions, proteins, and microbes have all been realized on this platform, which has paved the way to higher analysis on μPADs.