Mechanical behavior and pore integration density optimization of switchable hydrogel composite membranes

Switchable hydrogel-layered composite membranes can be used for the analysis of particle size distributions. This functionality is provided by pores with controllable diameter. In order to obtain a device that can be used to measure the cell size distribution in native biological samples, lots of switchable pores are required. In the current work, we model and simulate the mechanical behavior of active composite membranes with switchable pores. This is done in order to find the maximum number of pores that can be integrated into a membrane without cross-influencing effects on the actuation of the pores. Therefore, we investigate (1) the interaction of active pores inside the multifunctional composite and (2) the membrane bending under microfluidic pressure load. We show that through miniaturization, sufficient pores can be added to a permeation control membrane for processing native blood samples. The envisioned device allows a parallelized measurement of cell sizes in a simple lab-on-a-chip setup.