1. Novel cascaded control systems for microfluidic devices
- Author
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Li, Yuezhao and Li, Yuezhao
- Abstract
In the past decades, the scientific community is committed to understanding the mechanism of information encoding in the brain. Establishing a controlled micro-scale physiochemical environment in vitro is able to simulate the neuronal network in the brain and thus becomes a popular research topic. In order to keep cells or neurons to live homeostatically in the cell culture, it is necessary to supply nutrients and remove wastes continuously. The observation of cell activities in the cultured network has high spatial and temporal requirements. The speed of the drug delivery should be controlled precisely in order to prevent the generation of large shear stresses and air bubbles. In addition, the response of the drug delivery system should be fast enough to capture the signals processing among the target cells. Development of microfluidic techniques has improved the quality of cell cultivation performed in the micro-scale environment. Emergence of advanced liquid handling techniques such as droplet mixers and syringe pump injections has achieved efficient reagent and drug delivery while minimising wastes. However, the requirements for the microfluidic control techniques vary with applications and these liquid handling techniques are limited by their characteristics including complex structure, specific application range and high manufacture cost. Therefore, a simple and accurate microfluidic control system with high scalability and reasonable price is in high demand. In this research project, a novel cascaded microfluidic control system has been developed to accurately control the flow rate of the cell culture media delivery to establish a simulated physiochemical environment for neurons to live homeostatically for a certain amount of time. With the aid of modern control algorithms and advanced microcontrollers, the cascaded microfluidic control system is able to reach the target flow range of 0 to 60nl⁄s within seconds. Compared with mature commercial microfluidic co