Superhydrophobicity-Enabled Interfacial Microfluidics on Textile

Abstract

Capillary-driven microfluidics, utilizes the capillary force generated by fibrous hydrophilic materials (e.g., paper and cotton) to drive biological reagents, has been extended to various biological and chemical analyses recently. However, the restricted capillary-driving mechanism persists to be a major challenge for continuous and facilitated biofluidic transport. In this abstract, we have first introduced a new interfacial microfluidic transport principle to automatically and continuously drive three-dimensional liquid flows on a micropatterned superhydrophobic textile (MST). Specifically, the MST platform utilizes the surface tension-induced Laplace pressure to facilitate the liquid motion along the fibers, in addition to the capillary force existing in the fibrous structure. The surface tension-induced pressure can be highly controllable by the sizes of the stitching patterns of hydrophilic yarns and the confined liquid volume. Moreover, the fluidic resistances of various configurations of connecting fibers are quantitatively investigated. Furthermore, a demonstration of the liquid collection ability of MST has been demonstrated on an artificial skin model. The MST can be potentially applied to large volume and continuous biofluidic collection and removal.