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A Polymer-Based Microfluidic Device With Electrolyte-Enabled Distributed Transducers (Eedt) For Distributed Load Detection, Peng Cheng

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Theses & Dissertations

The capability of detecting distributed static and dynamic loads is indispensable in a wide variety of applications, such as examining anatomical structures of biological tissues in tissue health analysis and minimally invasive surgery (MIS) and determining the texture of an object in robotics. This dissertation presents a comprehensive study of a polymer-based microfluidic device with electrolyte-enabled distributed transducers and demonstrates a new concept on using a single microfluidic device for distributed-load detection, which takes advantage of the low-cost microfluidic fabrication technology and the low modulus and biocompatibility of polymer. The core of the device is a single deformable polymer microstructure …