Frequency-specific, valveless flow control in insect-mimetic microfluidic devices

Inexpensive, portable lab-on-a-chip devices would revolutionize fields like environmental monitoring and global health, but current microfluidic chips are tethered to extensive off-chip hardware. Insects, however, self-contained expertly manipulate fluids at the microscale using largely unexplored methods. We fabricated a series of that mimic key features insect respiratory kinematics observed by synchrotron-radiation imaging, including collapse portions multiple tracts in response single fluctuating pressure signal. In one single-channel device, flow rate direction could be controlled actuation frequency alone, without use internal valves. Additionally, we multichannel whose individual channels responded selectively (on with variable, frequency-dependent rate, or off) single, frequency. Our results demonstrate insect-mimetic designs have potential drastically reduce overhead for chips, systems may share impedance-mismatch pumps.