Millifluidic valves and pumps made of tape and plastic

There is growing interest in producing micro- and milli-fluidic technologies made of thermoplastic with integrated fluidic control elements that are easy to assemble and suitable for mass production. Here, we developed millifluidic valves and pumps made of acrylic layers bonded with double-sided tap...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lab on a chip 2023-10, Vol.23 (2), p.4579-4591
Main Authors: Amador-Hernandez, Josue U, Guevara-Pantoja, Pablo E, Cedillo-Alcantar, Diana F, Caballero-Robledo, Gabriel A, Garcia-Cordero, Jose L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chemical treatment
Configurations
Control equipment
Glucose
Mass production
Pressure sensitive adhesives
Pumps
Reagents
Valves
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Summary:There is growing interest in producing micro- and milli-fluidic technologies made of thermoplastic with integrated fluidic control elements that are easy to assemble and suitable for mass production. Here, we developed millifluidic valves and pumps made of acrylic layers bonded with double-sided tape that are simple and fast to assemble. We demonstrate that a layer of pressure-sensitive adhesive (PSA) is flexible enough to be deformed at relatively low pressures. A chemical treatment deposited on specific regions of the PSA prevents it from sticking to the thermoplastic, which enabled us to create three different types of valves in normally open or closed configurations. We characterized different aspects of their performance, their operating pressures, the cut-off pressure values to open or close the valves (for different configurations and sizes), and the flow rate and volume pumped by seven different micropumps. As an application, we implemented a glucose assay with integrated pumps and valves, automatically generating glucose dilutions and reagent mixing. The ability to create polymeric microfluidic control units made with tape paves the way for their mass manufacturing. We report millimeter-scale valves and pumps made of plastic and bonded with double-sided tape. Our manufacturing approach opens a path to mass-manufacture these fluidic elements in integrated milli-and micro-fluidic devices.
ISSN:1473-0197
1473-0189
DOI:10.1039/d3lc00559c