Virtual vortex gear: Unique flow patterns driven by microfluidic inertia leading to pinpoint injection

Chia-Hung Tsai*, Toshio Takayama, Yuta Shimozyo, Takayuki Akai, Makoto Kaneko

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

An interesting phenomenon that vortices are sequentially generated on a microfluidic chip is investigated in this paper. The direction of every two adjacent vortices is opposite to each other, like a set of gears, and thus is named virtual vortex gear (VVG). Both experiments and computational simulations were conducted in order to make clear the mechanism of VVG. The experimental results show that only the flow from a particular point would form vortices and enter the target chamber. A technique of inverse mapping is proposed based on the phenomenon and it demonstrates that only a pinpoint injection is sufficient to control the contents of a microfluidic chamber. VVG can significantly reduce the volume of chemical usage in biological research and has potential for other on-chip applications, such as mixing and valving.

Original languageEnglish
Article number034114
JournalBiomicrofluidics
Volume12
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 May 2018

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