Abstract
We compare the performance of a water-head pump (WHP) system with that of a syringe pump (SP) system with respect to fluctuation, tunability, and transient response of flow rate. Despite its simplicity, the WHP system has not been as widely adopted as a means of microfluidic control as the SP system, partly because the transient and steady-state flow rates of a WHP in a microfluidic system have not been characterized in detail. We show that the flow-rate fluctuation of the WHP system is at least one order of magnitude smaller than that of the SP system, and that the two systems have similar flow-rate tunability on the order of 1 nL min−1 to 1 mL min−1. In addition, the pressure rise time of the WHP system is at least one order of magnitude faster than that of the SP system. As model experiments, we applied the WHP system to hydrodynamic focusing with a stable focused stream and to fast fluidic switching. The WHP system could be broadly useful versus the SP system and could enable precise, stable, and fast flow-rate control with minimal experimental setup.
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