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arXiv · 1807.06765

Microfluidic pumping using artificial magnetic cilia

Srinivas Hanasoge·Peter J. Hesketh·Alexander Alexeev
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Abstract

One of the vital functions of naturally occurring cilia is fluid transport. Biological cilia use spatially asymmetric strokes to generate a net fluid flow that can be utilized for feeding, swimming, and other functions. Biomimetic synthetic cilia with similar asymmetric beating can be useful for fluid manipulations in lab-on-chip devices. In this paper, we demonstrate the microfluidic pumping by magnetically actuated synthetic cilia arranged in multi-row arrays. We use a microchannel loop to visualize flow created by the ciliary array and to examine pumping for a range of cilia and microchannel parameters. We show that magnetic cilia can achieve flow rates of up to 11 {\mu}l/min with the pressure drop of~ 1 Pa. Such magnetic ciliary array can be useful in microfluidic applications requiring rapid and controlled fluid transport.

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Srinivas Hanasoge, Peter J. Hesketh, Alexander Alexeev. 2018-07-18. Microfluidic pumping using artificial magnetic cilia. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41378-018-0010-9

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