The design and fabrication of autonomous polymer-based surface tension-confined microfluidic platforms

A one-step thick film printing process has been established for patterning hydrophobic polyvinyl chloride (PVC) substrate materials with hydrophilic cellulose acetate. The opposing patterned substrate materials are brought within close proximity utilizing spacer material of defined thickness. The parallel-plate configured devices are capable of supporting autonomous fluid transport through capillarity. Minimum attainable path widths of 313.3 +/- 17.9 mu m can be achieved utilizing an affordable personal printer for photomask generation. In addition, a theoretical model for this system predicting meniscus position as a function of time and system architecture is posed along with experimental data which is found to be in good agreement with the model. Lastly, the curvature of the surface is approximated and exploited for the determination of the true pressure jump across the curved surface at the gas-liquid interface at all points on a discretized surface. The curvature associated pressure jump results are found to be consistent with the Laplace pressure approximation.