We report a composite waveguide fabricated by attaching a coupling aperture to a waveguide. The acoustic impedance of the composite waveguide can be regulated by merely controlling its coupling vibrations, depending on its structure size. By changing the size to adjust the acoustic impedance of the composite waveguide at an impedance-mismatched fluidic interface, tunable sound transmission at t...

In this work, we report a novel method of fabricating Glass-PDMS-glass fluidic diode using CO2 laser ablation that avoids conventional laborious procedures such as spin coating and molding of PDMS. By using this type of fluidic diode we constructed a finger-driven microdevice that can meter and deliver (MAD) multiple solutions in parallel, and the efficiency and accuracy of the MAD function was...

This paper describes the application of a new and unconventional numerical method for computational modeling of fluidic micro-handling processes. The key requirement for modeling such processes is the ability to simulate flows with large number of complex shaped moving objects. Conventional body-conformal computational fluid dynamic (CFD) methods are not well suited for simulating such flows an...

A neuronal microneedle, a single-crystalline silicon microneedle with fluidic microchannels and microelectrodes, is developed for localized stimulation of and recording from neural cells. The neuronal microneedle delivers drugs such as excitatory amino acids at the cellular level as well as electrically records neural signals from neural cells. The fluidic behavior, the mechanical stability, an...

Integrating photonic crystals (PC) into microfluidic systems has attracted immense interest for its novel functions. However, it is still a great challenge to fabricate PC microfluidic chips rapidly with complex functions. In this work, a direct-writing colloidal PC microchannel was firstly achieved by inkjet printing and was used for the surface-tension-confined microfluidic immune assay. PC c...

This paper presents the design of a single module composing a modular soft variable stiffness manipulator for minimal access surgery. The module exploits flexible fluidic actuation for obtaining multi directional bending and elongation capabilities. A novel flexible crimped braided sheath is introduced in order to increase the performances of the flexible actuator. Granular jamming based stiffe...

In this paper, we present a technology for the batch-fabrication of fluidic devices which combines polymer and metal layers. The structures are fabricated by means of two-layer lithography and SU-8-based wafer bonding technique. The combination of SU-8 and metal layers allows the fabrication of “2(1/2)”-dimensional fluidic structures. We realized different types of micromixers for the investiga...

This paper presents a microfluidic pumping approach using traveling-wave dielectrophoresis (twDEP) of microparticles. With this approach, the flow is generated directly in the microfluidic devices by inducing strong electromechanical effects in the fluid using integrated microelectrodes. The fluidic driving mechanisms due to the particle-fluid and particle-particle interactions under twDEP are ...

Magnetic Shape Memory (MSM) actuators represent a new type of smart electromagnetic actuators where the MSM material elongates and contracts in a magnetic field. The MSM material has the ability to change its size or shape very fast and many million times repeatedly. Based on internally designed and produced Magnetic Shape Memory materials, the ETO GROUP has developed its new MAGNETOSHAPE® tech...

We developed high-density microfluidic chips that contain plumbing networks with thousands of micromechanical valves and hundreds of individually addressable chambers. These fluidic devices are analogous to electronic integrated circuits fabricated using large-scale integration. A key component of these networks is the fluidic multiplexor, which is a combinatorial array of binary valve patterns...