Design and modeling of a novel lab-on-chip

Increasing efforts are being directed towards lab on chips these days. A novel lab on chip has been designed and modeled in this study. The lab on chip includes 3 parts which are, a pool in which the fluid is placed, a micropump and finally a single microneedle. The whole chip was designed on a 1.5 cm*1 cm silicon wafer with a thickness of 150μ. The aim of this design was to reach suitable dimensions for the lab on chip in order to achieve the required velocity and pressure output. Also we needed to be sure about the performance of the micropump since its actuator was an initiated model. The actuator of the micropump was a PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) layer covered with iron fillings. When the layer is exposed in a magnetic field, it will move upwards and with this displacement the pressure difference achieved under the layer will make the fluid flow in the direction desired. In this study the labonchip was modeled and analysed in OpenFoam with the dsmc solver to achieve suitable dimensions.