Design and Development of a Droplet-Based Microfluidics System Using Laser Fabrication Machining Techniques for a Lab on a Chip Device

Sampath, W. H. P.; Hettiarachchi, Samith; Melroy, Gehan; Amarasinghe, Y. W. R.

doi:10.1007/978-981-15-5852-8_19

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Photolithography and rapid prototyping are the most common fabrication techniques used in fabricating microrobots [124]. Expensive equipment, complex facilities, and tedious tasks are required to perform photolithography processes whereas rapid prototyping techniques have a less complicated approach [125,126]. In terms of mimicking the bacteria flagella, helical microrobots are used.…”

Section: Hydrogelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review on the Motion of Magnetically Actuated Bio-Inspired Microrobots

et al. 2022

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Nature consists of numerous solutions to overcome challenges in designing artificial systems. Various actuation mechanisms have been implemented in microrobots to mimic the motion of microorganisms. Such bio-inspired designs have contributed immensely to microscale developments. Among the actuation mechanisms, magnetic actuation is widely used in bio-inspired microrobotic systems and related propulsion mechanisms used by microrobots to navigate inside a magnetic field and are presented in this review. In addition, the considered robots are in microscale, and they can swim inside a fluidic environment with a low Reynolds number. In relation to microrobotics, mimicry of bacteria flagella, sperm flagella, cilia, and fish are significant. Due to the fact that these biological matters consist of different propulsion mechanisms, the effect of various parameters was investigated in the last decade and the review presents a summary that enhances understanding of the working principle of propulsion mechanisms. In addition, the effect of different parameters on the various speeds of the existing microrobots was analyzed to identify their trends. So, the swimming speeds of the microrobots show an upward trend with increasing body length, frequency, magnetic flux density, and helix angle. Microfabrication techniques play a significant role in the microscale because the device designs are highly dependent on the availability of the techniques. The presented microrobots were manufactured by 3D/4D photolithography and rapid prototyping techniques. Proper materials enable effective fabrication of microrobots using the mentioned techniques. Therefore, magnetically active material types, matrix materials, biocompatible and biodegradable materials are presented in this study. Utilizing biocompatible and biodegradable materials avoids adverse effects to the organs that could occur otherwise. In addition, magnetic field generation is significant for the propulsion of such microrobots. We conclude the review with an overview of the biomimicry of microrobots and magnetically actuated robot propulsion.

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Section: Hydrogelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Review on the Motion of Magnetically Actuated Bio-Inspired Microrobots

et al. 2022

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“…The droplet generator used in this study was based on flow-focusing geometry, and the device was previously developed by the research group [50]. The laser machining technique was used to fabricate the layers of the design, and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) was used as the material.…”

Section: Droplet Generatormentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The contraction geometry was designed with a reduction of the channel width, and it directly affected the droplet formation process. All of the dimensions were obtained using numerical simulations [49,50].…”

Section: Droplet Generatormentioning

confidence: 99%

Vision-Based Performance Analysis of an Active Microfluidic Droplet Generation System Using Droplet Images

Mudugamuwa

Hettiarachchi

Melroy

et al. 2022

Sensors

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This paper discusses an active droplet generation system, and the presented droplet generator successfully performs droplet generation using two fluid phases: continuous phase fluid and dispersed phase fluid. The performance of an active droplet generation system is analysed based on the droplet morphology using vision sensing and digital image processing. The proposed system in the study includes a droplet generator, camera module with image pre-processing and identification algorithm, and controller and control algorithm with a workstation computer. The overall system is able to control, sense, and analyse the generation of droplets. The main controller consists of a microcontroller, motor controller, voltage regulator, and power supply. Among the morphological features of droplets, the diameter is extracted from the images to observe the system performance. The MATLAB-based image processing algorithm consists of image acquisition, image enhancement, droplet identification, feature extraction, and analysis. RGB band filtering, thresholding, and opening are used in image pre-processing. After the image enhancement, droplet identification is performed by tracing the boundary of the droplets. The average droplet diameter varied from ~3.05 mm to ~4.04 mm in the experiments, and the average droplet diameter decrement presented a relationship of a second-order polynomial with the droplet generation time.

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