A microfluidic gas damper for stabilizing gas pressure in portable microfluidic systems.

Pressure fluctuations, which invariably occur in microfluidic systems, usually result in the unstable fluid delivery in microfluidic channels. In this work, a novel microfluidic gas damper is proposed and applied for providing stable fluid-driving pressures. Then, a pressure-driven flow setup is constructed to investigate the gas damping characteristics of our damper. Since the pressure-driven flow setup functions as a resistor-capacitor low-pass filter, the damper significantly decreases the amplitude of the input pressures via self-regulating its pneumatic resistance. In addition, the gas volume and pressure frequency are found to have direct effects on the pressure fluctuations. The practical application of the gas damper is examined through a portable pressure-driven system, which consists of an air blower, a gas damper, and a centrifuge tube. By periodically pressing the air blower, precise flow rates with low throughput (∼9.64 μl min-1) and high throughput (∼1367.15 μl min-1) are successfully delivered. Future integration of our microfluidic gas damper with miniaturized pressure generators (e.g., peristaltic or pressure-driven micropumps) can fully exploit the potential of the gas damper for low-cost, portable microfluidics where stable pressures or flow rates are required.