Simulation of a flow control system performance in the microchannels network using external pneumatic pressure source and hydrophobic passive valves

A Lab-On-a-Chip (LOC) is a device which can integrateone or many laboratory functions on a small chip withmillimeters to few square centimeters in size. These deviceswith small size, low use and production cost, high speedand safety have many applications in medical, chemical,environmental, biological and even radioactive tests. One ofthe most important parts of Lab-On-a-chip’s structure is thesystem of controlling flow inside the network ofmicrochannels which needs to be highly accurate. In thisresearch, numerical simulation on a flow control system inthe network of microchannels with passive hydrophobicvalves coupled with external pneumatic pressure sourceusing FLUENT code has been performed. The major goal ofthis research is to propose a new geometry for sampleseparation which is able to move, meter and also separatetwo certain amounts of fluid from unknown volume ofsample simultaneously.