Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Use Of A Porous Membrane For Gas Bubble Removal In Microfluidic Channels: Physical Mechanisms And Design Criteria, Jie Xu, Regis Vaillant, Daniel Attinger

Daniel Attinger

We demonstrate and explain a simple and efficient way to remove gas bubbles from liquid-filled microchannels, by integrating a hydrophobic porous membrane on top of the microchannel. A prototype chip is manufactured in hard, transparent polymer with the ability to completely filter gas plugs out of a segmented flow at rates up to 7.4 μl/s/mm2 of membrane area. The device involves a bubble generation section and a gas removal section. In the bubble generation section, a T-junction is used to generate a train of gas plugs into a water stream. These gas plugs are then transported toward the gas removal …