휴대용 랩온어칩을 위한 무동력 펌프 제작

We fabricated two types of finger-squeezing pumps that were integrated with a lab-on-a-chip. One was a check-valve-type pump that comprised two check valves and one pump reservoir in between, which was operated by the deformable PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) membrane of the check valves. The other was a PDMS-sponge-type pump that was operated by the deformation of a porous PDMS sponge. The porous PDMS sponge could be fabricated by the sugar leaching technique based on the capillary suction of pre-cured PDMS into sugar lumps. Three kinds of PDMS-sponge-type pumps were fabricated; all had different porosities owing to the different sugar grain sizes. The performance of the check-valve-type pump and the three types of PDMS-sponge-type pumps were investigated. They were integrated with microfluidic chips to detect the fluorescence of microalgae. The microfluidic chips integrated with finger-squeezing pumps are expected to be portable, disposable, and power-free chips.