Self-aligning microfluidic interconnects for glass- and plastic-based microfluidic systems

In this work, we present novel self-aligning fluidic interconnection techniques with low dead volume and pressure drop for generic microfluidic systems and capillary electrophoresis chips. We have successfully designed, fabricated and characterized two self-aligning fluidic interconnection techniques in this work, both resulting in low dead volume and low pressure drop across the interconnects. The first technique is a serial assembly technique, in which each fluidic interconnect is assembled individually, exhibiting a pressure drop of 977 Pa (0.14 psi) at a flow rate of 100 µl min^-1. The second technique is a parallel assembly technique that is suitable for high-density interconnects with multi-stacked generic microfluidic systems, which has a pressure drop of 1024 Pa (0.15 psi) at a flow rate of 100 µl min^-1. Furthermore, the parallel assembly technique is ideally suited for plastic-based microfluidic systems. We have simulated the flow characteristics of these interconnection schemes and, based in part on the simulation results, we have designed the above interconnection schemes. We have also characterized these interconnects in terms of the physical robustness of the interconnection scheme. The serial interconnection scheme can theoretically withstand 2.6 MPa and the parallel interconnection scheme can withstand a theoretical maximum pressure of 6.6 MPa.