title: Electromechanical properties of pressure-actuated poly(dimethylsiloxane) microfluidic push-down valves.
abstract: Pressure-actuated poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) valves have been characterized with respect to their electromechanical properties. Measurements of the valve opening and closing times, threshold pressures, and impedance spectra for closed valves can be used to assess the quality of the devices in general, determine their suitability for specialized applications, such as providing electrical isolated fluidic compartments for planar patch clamping, and specify ideal operating conditions. For our particular valve designs, we report valve opening times of the order of 10-100 micros, making them suitable for rapid buffer exchange applications. They can effectively provide reversible electrical isolation between adjacent fluidic compartments with typical resistances of 5 Gohms in the closed state, which meets the gigaohm requirement for patch clamping applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1120, USA.
authors.forename: Hao
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Gu
authors.forename: Nick
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Cellar
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Kennedy
authors.forename: Shuichi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Takayama
authors.forename: Jens-Christian
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Meiners
mesh_terms: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; D004867:Equipment Design; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation*
chemical_list: D004129:Dimethylpolysiloxanes; C013830:baysilon