Papers by Author: Chien Hsing Lu

Abstract: This work reports a novel mixing design that can do fast, batch-typed liquid mixing on a centrifugal platform. Mixing is an important procedure for many applications related to chemical reactors and biological assays, especially in the field of microfluidics. The extremely small sizes of microchannels make it difficult to achieve turbulence to assist mixing. To overcome this problem, a meandering fluidic design on the centrifugal platform is proposed. Centrifual force promotes mixing by inducing lateral flow movement in the circular section and flow focusing effect in the bending section. The degree of mixing was studied for solutions with various viscosities under different rotational speeds. The experimental results showed that this mixer can mix microliter or nanoliter volumes of aqueous solutions within one second.

Abstract: This work presents a novel approach to decant and meter supernatant on a centrifugal platform. Supernatant decanting, such as decanting plasma from the centrifuged whole blood, is an important sample preparation procedure for the whole blood bioassays. By manipulating the centrifugally induced pressure and the elastic deformation of the chamber’s plastic lid, fixed amounts of the supernatant can be decanted into the detection chamber. This approach has the advantages of low manufacturing cost and ease of operation.