Abstract
Fibers are widely used in different industrial processes, for example in paper manufacturing or lost circulation problems in the oil industry. Recently, interest towards the use of fibers at the microscale has grown, driven by research in bio-medical applications or drug delivery systems. Microfluidic systems are not only directly relevant for lab-on-chip applications, but have also proven to be good model systems to tackle fundamental questions about the flow of fiber suspensions. It has therefore become necessary to provide fiber-like particles with an excellent control of their properties. We present here two complementary in situ methods to fabricate controlled micro-fibers allowing for an embedded fabrication and flow-on-a-chip platform. The first one, based on a photo-lithography principle, can be used to make isolated fibers and dilute fiber suspensions at specific locations of interest inside a microchannel. The self-assembly property of super-paramagnetic colloids is the principle of the second fabrication method, which enables the fabrication of concentrated suspensions of more flexible fibers. We propose a flow gallery with several examples of fiber flow illustrating the two methods’ capabilities and a range of recent laminar flow results.
Highlights
The flow of fiber suspensions occurs in a large number of industrial processes and applications, ranging from paper fabrication [1] to lost circulation problems in the oil industry [2]
We present a second microfluidic in situ fabrication method to obtain suspensions of flexible fibers at a much higher concentration
We described two attractive methods to fabricate microscopic fibers directly inside microfluidic channels
Summary
The flow of fiber suspensions occurs in a large number of industrial processes and applications, ranging from paper fabrication [1] to lost circulation problems in the oil industry [2]. A good control of these processes relies on the understanding of the underlying mechanisms, notably the interaction between fibers and flows. These interactions depend strongly on the fiber and flow properties of the given situation and are often found to be complex in industrial applications. Recent efforts to build lab-on-a-chip applications has created increasing interest in microscopic systems containing fiber-like particles, for example for biomedical applications, drug delivery or micro-filtration devices [3,4]. In this case, the precise understanding of the fiber flow interactions is a necessary ingredient for the development of efficient devices. One of them is based on an existing UV-curing method of micro-objects directly inside micro-channels [9,10], whereas the second uses self-assembly properties of magnetic colloids into chains to fabricate long and flexible filaments
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