Lifting Gate Polydimethylsiloxane Microvalves and Pumps for Microfluidic Control

Overview

Journal Anal Chem

Specialty Chemistry

Date 2012 Jan 20

PMID 22257104

Citations 43

Authors

Jungkyu Kim

Minjee Kang

Erik C Jensen

Richard A Mathies

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We describe the development and characterization of pneumatically actuated "lifting gate" microvalves and pumps. A fluidic layer containing the gate structure and a pneumatic layer are fabricated by soft-lithography in PDMS and bonded permanently with an oxygen plasma treatment. The microvalve structures are then reversibly bonded to a featureless glass or plastic substrate to form hybrid glass-PDMS and plastic-PDMS microchannel structures. The break-through pressures of the microvalve increase linearly up to 65 kPa as the closing pressure increases. The pumping capability of these structures ranges from the nanoliter to microliter scale depending on the number of cycles and closing pressure employed. The micropump structures exhibit up to 86.2% pumping efficiency from flow rate measurements. The utility of these structures for integrated sample processing is demonstrated by performing an automated immunoassay. These lifting gate valve and pump structures enable facile integration of complex microfluidic control systems with a wide range of lab-on-a-chip substrates.

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