Abstract
The design of microfluidic Lab on a Chip (LoC) systems is an onerous task requiring specialized skills in fluid dynamics, mechanical design drafting, and manufacturing. Engineers face significant challenges during the labor-intensive process of designing microfluidic devices, with very few specialized tools that help automate the process. Typical design iterations require the engineer to research the architecture, manually draft the device layout, optimize for manufacturing processes, and manually calculate and program the valve sequences that operate the microfluidic device. The problem compounds when engineers not only have to test the functionality of the chip but are also expected to optimize them for the robust execution of biological assays. In this paper, we present an interactive tool for designing continuous flow microfluidic devices. 3DμF is the first completely open source interactive microfluidic system designer that readily supports state of the art design automation algorithms. Through various case studies, we show 3DμF can be used to reproduce designs from literature, provide metrics for evaluating microfluidic design complexity and showcase how 3DμF is a platform for integrating a wide assortment of engineering techniques used in the design of microfluidic devices as a part of the standard design workflow.
Highlights
The design of microfluidic Lab on a Chip (LoC) systems is an onerous task requiring specialized skills in fluid dynamics, mechanical design drafting, and manufacturing
Parametric Design Engineering with 3DμF. 3DμF is a semi-automated design tool that employs design techniques typically seen in electronics Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools, such as PCB editors, in the design of microfluidic devices. 3DμF automatically captures the relationships between objects placed on the design canvas that would be necessary to understand the underlying architecture of a microfluidic device created within its design environment
While the provided user interface might seem like a simple environment lacking the advanced drafting and transformation features often seen in design tools such as SolidWorks and AutoCAD, the simple user interface abstracts much of the design automation that attempts to obviate the needs of the user to use the features as mentioned previously
Summary
The design of microfluidic Lab on a Chip (LoC) systems is an onerous task requiring specialized skills in fluid dynamics, mechanical design drafting, and manufacturing. Engineers face significant challenges during the labor-intensive process of designing microfluidic devices, with very few specialized tools that help automate the process. Even in research areas where microfluidic devices have the potential to address numerous challenges in biological computation, primarily when used as the platform on which synthetic biological systems can be specified, designed, built, and tested[3], the absence of widespread use of microfluidic devices is symptomatic of the problems faced in engineering and manufacturing them. The potential benefits of introducing domain specific Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools have motivated researchers to develop design automation www.nature.com/scientificreports/. The survey[4] published by Araci et al provides an excellent overview of the various design automation tools developed in the field
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