Microfluidic Capillary Arrays for Pixelated Control of Multimaterial Flows

Abstract

We present a novel approach for the production of customizable microscale multimaterial flow cross-sections. Here, a 3D-printed array of microfluidic capillaries selectively maps numerous viscosity-matched fluids to control the cross-sectional geometry of a heterogeneous Poiseuille flow. Whereas previous work has demonstrated relatively simple axisymmetric flows, our approach is highly scalable to complex cross-sectional geometries and large numbers of fluid inputs, and enables tailored cross-sections without the limitation of radial symmetries, enabling the production of arbitrary fluidic ‘images’. We further design and implement an automated algorithm that generates a 3D model of an integr..