Micropatterned superhydrophobic textile for biofluidic transport

Textile-enabled interfacial microfluidics, utilizes the capillary force generated by fibrous hydrophilic yarns (e.g., cotton) to drive biological reagents, has been extended to various biochemical analyses recently. However, the restricted capillary-driving mechanism persists to be a major challenge for continuous and facilitated biofluidic transport. In this abstract, we have first introduced a new interfacial microfluidic transport principle to automatically drive three-dimensional liquid flows on a micropatterned superhydrophobic textile (MST) platform in a controllable and continuous manner. Specifically, the MST system utilizes the surface tension-induced Laplace pressure to facilitate the liquid motion along the fabric, in addition to the capillary force existing in the fibrous structure. The surface tension-induced pressure as well as pumping speed can be highly controllable by the sizes of the stitching patterns of hydrophilic yarns and the confined liquid volume. The MST can be potentially applied to large volume and continuous biofluidic collection and removal.