Wirelessly powered microfluidic sensor and actuator systems

Abstract

Microfluidic systems, which handle fluids in very small quantities, are becoming increasingly popular in biomedical applications. This research aims to develop a wireless power supply module which can drive microfluidic sensor and actuator systems using inductive power transfer (IPT) with super capacitor storage. The main challenge is to source a variety of microvalves which have different power requirements ranging from micro-watts to couple of watts. An IPT solution is proposed where the primary side is external to the microfluidic system while the secondary coil will be housed within the microvalve, which is very challenging as miniaturization is vital. Supercapacitors are used as a backup to source high power requirements of the system.