Design and validation of a pure hydrodynamic microfluidic multidrop switch

Abstract

Recently, several solutions have been proposed for realizing microfluidic switches able to route incoming microfluidic packets towards the intended output interface. In existing solutions, however, microfluidic frames consist of two droplets only: one contains the payload, whereas the other is used for signaling purposes only. As a consequence efficiency of such solution is very small. In this paper the above limitation is overcome by proposing microfluidic switches that can route microfluidic frames consisting of several, i.e, more than two, droplet. In such packets one droplet is used for signaling purposes only, whereas all the others carry payload. Therefore, efficiency increases. In this paper the proposed solution is described, analyzed and assessed through simulations.