Flow rate controlling by capillary micropumps in open biomicrofluidic devices

Abstract

In recent years, microfluidics has been used widely in various biomedical applications. Due to the multiple advantages derived from capillary microfluidics, such as simplicity, low-cost fabrication, and being fast plus accurate, it has emerged as an alternative to traditional diagnosis assays. Gaining accurate results in the biomedical tests within capillary microfluidic devices requires precise controlling of the fluid flow rate inside the channels, which can be regulated by embedded capillary micropump. Discovering suitable micropump design has always been one of the most technical barriers in the development of capillary microfluidic systems for point-of-care testing. In this study, COMSOL Multiphysics, which is a commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package based on finite element method (FEM), is utilized to perform numerical simulations of the mentioned challenge. The study carried out in five different capillary micropump geometries, which are created by employing a detailed algorithm. Furthermore, an equation based on the outputs of the simulation is calculated, in which the number of pillars for demanded fluid flow rate in the micropump can be determined. The proposed approach in this study assists scientists in designing optimized micropumps for their applications.