Pressure drop in passive valves

If assuming a microchannel with a rectangular cross-section, the pressure drop can be

calculated according to the ecuation:
1 1
1 1
p=2 gl cos c
+ +
+
w 1 h1
w 2 h2

[( ) (

being

gl

)]

the surface energy per area at the interface,

is the contact angle value,

and w and h are width and height of the microchannel.

PDMS
Microfluidics systems are constructed on polymer-based materials, being PDMS among the
most preferred, because of some advantageous properties, as permeability, elasticity,
biocompatibility. Even with these versatile features, PDMS has some shortcomings that
represent some issues when experimenting. One of them is its hydrophobic nature, which
means selective adsorbtion due to interatomic forces, for example, hydrogen bonding or
van der Waals. Some organic molecules of interest (e.g. proteins) can suffer from these
interactions, leading to adsorption of the surface of the polymer. Due to this effect, the
surface of PDMS can be made hydrophilic using a simple air plasma treatment; however,
this property is quickly lost through hydrophobic recovery caused by diffusion of unreacted
oligomer to the surface.
Equipment
The microfluidics system used for the experiment was the one fabricated on the previous
laboratory session. The structure consists of four microchannels, with 500m in width and
50m in height, each one possessing a geometry based passive valve.
A pressure sensor (Model 0804, SensorTechniques GmbH) was used to start the flow in
each microchannel. Under pressure was used on this practice. To select and manipulate the
pressure of the flow, a PC trough RS-232 was coupled to the sensor. The manipulation can
be achieved through the TestBench interface.
For the visualization of the channels, an imaging system was required. This system consists
of a FireWire camera (XCD-X710, Sony), optical structure (Optem Macro Video Zoom
Lens of Qioptiq GmbH, Germany)
Procedure
Dyed deionized water was injected into the channel inlet, and the pressure sensor is inserted
one the other inlet. The pressure was increased slowly and constant, until the water started
to move. The pressure difference was increased again, so the water can move along the
valve. This procedure was followed on each channel.
For the contact angle measurement, the microchannels structure was rinsed and dried. Then
the MicroFluidics interface on MatLab was open. The structure was collocated under the
camera, and not-dyed water was injected this time. A single image, or background, was
acquired first, and then pressure is applied until there is a visible meniscus on the interface.
In order to analyze dynamic contact angle, the flow was forced to move again, but now
recording this movement with an image stream. A binary mask was created with the

background image, so the image stream can be loaded, to make a proper detection of the
meniscus. Analysis of the images was done with Meniscus Tracking command.

(g) http://mass.micro.uiuc.edu/