Microfluidic coupler for hybrid integrated lab-on-a-chip

Abstract

Paper presented to the 10th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Florida, 14-16 July 2014.Lab-on-chips (LOCs) or miniaturized total analytical systems (μTAS) are attractive to perform chemical and biological analysis using small amounts of samples in a short time. Micro machined fluidics and optical devices are integral components of LOCs, which are fabricated monolithically or by hybrid integration in order to perform various analytical process in a single chip. In this work, simulation and implementation of a microfluidic coupler for the hybrid integration of an optical microfluidic system by using silica-on-silicon waveguides and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chips are demonstrated. The presented microfluidic coupler simplifies the fabrication of optical microfluidic systems by coupling the fluid from the PDMS chip to the micro channel in the silica-onwaveguide. The micro-flow behavior through the coupler is investigated by the simulations carried out using the COMSOL multiphysics and the experiments as well.