Simulating fluid flow in “Shrinky Dink” microfluidic chips — Potential for combination with low-cost DIY microPIV

This paper describes the first steps towards a union of low-cost “Shrinky Dink” (SD) microfluidic chip fabrication with low-cost do-it-yourself (DIY) micro-PIV. The SD microfluidic chip fabrication technique enables rapid development of complex designs using inexpensive materials and reagents, while abrogating the need for a cleanroom. DIY microPIV system provides a low-cost means of accurate flow profile analysis in microchannels, comparable to high-cost, standard microPIV setups. Initially, a simple microfluidic design of a T-junction was created and several chips with the same design were fabricated by the SD technique. We used COMSOL Multiphysics Creeping Flow interface to simulate the flow profiles in the obtained channel geometry. The next step will be to experimentally verify these simulations using our DIY microPIV system, in order to confirm the potential of combined use of these two cost-effective systems, to rapidly produce and analyze microfluidic designs, thereby enabling greater accessibility to these methods in labs with limited resources. It is envisioned that the systems described here can be effectively employed for a wide array of applications in biophysics, fluid mechanics, and bioengineering.