Experimental Studies on the Surface-Driven Capillary Flow of Water in Pristine and Processed Microfluidic Devices Fabricated by PMMA

Abstract

In this work, air dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) plasma processing on pristine polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) flat surface is the chosen surface modification technique to vary the surface wettability creating a difference in microfluidic speed of dyed water. Straight microchannel of uniform width, microchannel with integrated micropillars on bottom wall, and microchannel bend are the proposed designs of PMMA microfluidic devices in this work. Each microfluidic flow of dyed water is recorded by a CMOS camera. Author has fabricated total 12 individual microfluidic devices in this work. This work will be useful in bioengineering applications