Fluid Separated Volumetric Flow Converter (FSVFC) for high speed and precise cell position control

This paper reports the on-chip Fluid Separated Volumetric Flow Converter (FSVFC) capable of high speed cell position control with high resolution. There are various situations where we need to avoid mixing working fluid and actuation fluid for biological considerations, and such demand motivates the development of FSVFC. The proposed on-chip comb shaped FSVFC is composed of two separated groups of microfluidic channels arranged in parallel, and the main advantage is that actuation can be transmitted through the FSVFC without fluids being mixed. We succeeded in manipulating the position of a cell in microfluidic channel in the working area with the FSVFC as well as an online high speed vision sensor and a high speed PZT actuator. According to the experimental results, the average rise time of 12 miliseconds and the position control within 240 nanometers are achieved.