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Design and Simulation of High-Throughput Microfluidic Droplet Dispenser for Lab-on-a-Chip Applications

C. Jin[1], X. Xiong[2], P. Patra[1], R. Zhu[1], J. Hu[3]
[1]Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT, USA
[2]Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT, USA
[3]Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Bridgeport, Bridgeport, CT, USA
Published in 2014

Digital Microfluidic Biochip (DMFB) has been widely used in Lab-on-a-Chip (LoC) for disease diagnosis and treatment applications. To quickly convert traditional analog fluidic sample into digital droplets for DMFB processing, a high-throughput microfluidic droplet dispenser device is needed. In this paper, a high-throughput analog-to-digital microdroplet dispenser for Lab-on-a-Chip application is proposed. The proposed droplet dispenser has multiple output electrode channels. Taking analog fluid flow as input, it can quickly convert it into multiple digital droplets for DMFB (digital microflulidic biochip) processing. COMSOL® simulation is used to understand the mechanism of dispensing and verify the function of the dispenser. In this work, a 3-D multiphase flow model is developed and the Laminar Two-Phase Flow, Level Set (tpf) interface was used to simulate the movement of the droplet on the EWOD. Simulation result shows the designed droplet dispenser can quickly dispense digital droplets from analog flow for DMFB processing.

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