Logic Circuits Based on Chemical Volume Phase Transition Transistors for Planar Microfluidics and Lab‐on‐a‐Chip Automation

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Despite great progress of lab-on-a-chip (LoC) technology platforms in the last 30 years, there is a lack of standardized microfluidic components, real on-chip automation and progressive functional scalability of the fluidic circuits. Hydrogel-based microfluidic circuits have a high scaling potential and provide on-chip automation, but are complex in system design. An advanced circuit concept for planar microfluidic chip architectures, originating from the early era of the semiconductor-based resistor-transistor-logic (RTL) is presented and the hydrogel-based chemical volume phase transition transistor (CVPT) for logic gate operations is implemented. The circuit concept (CVPT-RTL) is robust and simple in design, feasible with common materials and manufacturing techniques of the LoC technology. Thereby, three major challenges are solved: contamination issues, maintaining the signal compliance for cascadability, and chemical signal inversion. As a central element, a CVPT cascode is introduced. The functionality of the concept is verified by a 24 h test of the NAND gate operation and a self-automated chemofluidic analog-to-digital converter, utilized as interface between bioreactors and extended microfluidic logic circuits. Moreover, the CVPT-RTL cascode demonstrates the expected self-stabilizing performance of the NAND gate. Accompanying simulations of the component behavior based on a network description implemented in Matlab Simscape match with the experimental results.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number2200185
Number of pages11
JournalAdvanced materials technologies
Volume7
Issue number11
Publication statusPublished - Jul 2022
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85133174233
Mendeley 5e3a2a12-ca07-3c4e-80a9-d63191d18f53
WOS 000819669700001
ORCID /0000-0002-8588-9755/work/142246723

Keywords

Keywords

  • chemofluidic converter, hydrogel actuators, microfluidic logic, DESIGN, FLOW-CONTROL, DIGITAL LOGIC, VALVES, HYDROGEL