Automatization and control of home-made micro injection pumps for a microfluidic system

Abstract

Microfluidics is a research field which allow us control over liquids at micrometric scale. It has several applications such as chemistry, biomedicine and biology, among others. Microfluidics enable the development of systems capable of cell manipulation and very precise chemical reactions with substantial improvements over common or bulk synthesis, let us fabricate nanocarriers with specific characteristics. In fact, the customization of variables is what makes it so versatile. One of the main issues we deal with is the control and injection of small volume fluids inside the microfluidic cell, ranging in some microliters per hour with a controlled and constant velocity. Commercial systems of this kind are expensive but instead they can be replaced by a home-made system. Here we present the design and implementation of a low cost 4-channel microinjection system by using 3D printing, Arduino and LabView. The implemented pumps are capable to deliver a minimum of 70 μl/h and a maximum of 54 ml/h of fluid, are scalable, easy to reproduce and low cost, making available for a wide range of researchers, the time of development is small compared with the acquisition and importation time, from a couple of days against months, with a price in the range of hundreds instead thousands of dollars and with similar characteristics to those commercially available.