Microfluidics
In simple terms it is hair-like miniature plumbing, involving extremely narrow pipes, channels, nozzles, membranes and droplets on surfaces.
It is nature’s key technology for transporting life supporting gases and liquids over long distances whilst preserving cellular micro and nano dimensions.
Printing and sprays in all forms are just two typical examples where microfluidics is widely employed.
It is a key technology in analytical instrumentation – it enables high throughputs of small volumes in multiplexed configurations and portability for applications such as diagnostics and environmental sensing.
It also enables new product forms to be synthesised and processes to be intensified, including heat extraction from complex and confined spaces in devices such as microprocessors.
When considering the essential and ubiquitous role of microfluidics in nature (think gas and fluid transportation – bloodstream and lungs of fauna: sap and leaves of flora) it is perhaps surprising that it is only in the last 10-20 years that industry has created some substantial businesses enabled by microfluidics (inkjet print heads – printers – ink – printed film /paper– HP, pregnancy test kits – Inverness Medical). One example is from the electronics sector and the other from the chemicals sector, one depends on silicon (MEMS) fabrication, the other polymer fabrication. Both require well defined chemical formulations interacting with flexible polymer films, foils and polymer composites (paper) to work reliably. Both are Fluence customers.
The field of microfluidics argueably is where channel dimensions are less than 400×400 microns where reaction kinetic benefits are most apparent. The field has broadened to include larger channels required to accomodate larger fluid volumes and storage reservoirs and miniaturised microtitre well arrays or cell culturing arrays that are still relatively large at the millimetre scale range. Similarly the invention of digital fluidics where electrowetting is used to controllably move droplets across a surface or within a liquid crystal-like cell, the use of membranes with pore size from molecular to nanometres and larger and micro and nanostructured surfaces that provide an additional handle to manipulate surface wetting cahracteristics as in the natural example of the lotus leaf. Similarly the use of optical, electrical and mechanical tweezers for manipulating particles, cells and droplets has driven the requirement for the multidisciplinary approaches, the use of hybrid materials solutions and multi-domain (function) and multi-level integration.
The Fluence Centre supports a range of applications that are enabled by micro and nano fluidic processing routes and an increasing range of products that can be produced using microfluidics or whose applications depend on microfluidics inside.
Processing routes:
- High Throughput Experimentation (HTE)
- Development of New Processes
- Development of New Formulations / Products
- New Chemistry
- Process Intensification
- New Supply Chain Opportunities
Products:
- Analytical Devices
- Diagnostic Devices
- Novel Delivery Systems
- New materials (e.g. nanoparticles, purer chemicals )