Contactless Electrochemical Actuator for Microfluidic Dosing

A contactless microfluidic dosing system based on actuation by an electrochemical reaction has been designed and tested. The device is composed of two chambers separated by a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) plate. One chamber is loaded with the liquid sample to be dosed while the electrochemical reaction occurs in the second chamber. Due to the strict separation between the reaction responsible of the actuation and the sample, the latter is preserved from contamination and/or electrochemical modification. Silicon master microstructures were fabricated using clean-room technologies and subsequently replicated into the PDMS. A full microsystem has been fabricated and tested. Microliter sample solutions can be easily and reproducibly dispensed in a time frame of a few tens of seconds.