Hydrophobic microfluidics

Hydrophobic microfluidics is a method for controlling fluid flow in microfluidic systems using restrictions that act as passive valves. Many different fluid processing components can be designed, such as mixers, sample dividers, sample consolidators, and others, all in a passive and reliable manner. This method of fluid control is excellent for highly parallel sample analysis, such as in DNA processing and immune-diagnostics. Hydrophobic microfluidics has also shown the advantage of easily interfacing with external hardware and integrating with external analysis equipment. This allows it to take advantage of both the micro and macro realms, whichever is most suited for the application. It also allows for an inexpensive integration of microfluidics into a company's sample analysis protocols. A rapid prototyping technique has been developed that has allowed functional fluidic components to be designed and tested in a short period of time. This technique uses a KrF laser to perform bulk laser ablation in fluorocarbons that have been compounded with carbon black. The carbon black allows the fluorocarbon to be absorptive in the 248nm wavelength region, when, normally, a deep UV laser or reactive ion etching process would be needed. This method of fluorocarbon processing is considerably cheaper and faster than alternative prototyping techniques.