Advanced Simulation of Droplet Microfluidics

Abstract

The complexity of droplet microfluidics grows with the implementation of parallel processes and multiple functionalities on a single device. This poses a severe challenge to the engineer designing the corresponding microfluidic networks. In today’s design processes, the engineer relies on calculations, assumptions, simplifications, as well as his/her experiences and intuitions. To validate the obtained specification of the microfluidic network, usually a prototype is fabricated and physical experiments are conducted thus far. In case the design does not implement the desired functionality, this prototyping iteration is repeated—obviously resulting in an expensive and time-consuming design process. To avoid unnecessary debugging loops involving fabrication and testing, simulation methods could help to initially validate the specification of the microfluidic network before any prototype is fabricated. However, state-of-the-art simulation tools come with severe limitations, which prevent their utilization for practically relevant applications. More precisely, they are often not dedicated to droplet microfluidics, cannot handle the required physical phenomena, are not publicly available, and can hardly be extended. In this work, we present an advanced simulation approach for droplet microfluidics that addresses these shortcomings and, eventually, allows simulating practically relevant applications. To this end, we propose a simulation framework at the one-dimensional analysis model, which directly works on the specification of the design, supports essential physical phenomena, is publicly available, and is easy to extend. Evaluations and case studies demonstrate the benefits of the proposed simulator: While current state-of-the-art tools were not applicable for practically relevant microfluidic networks, the proposed simulator allows reducing the design time and costs, e.g., of a drug screening device from one person month and USD 1200, respectively, to just a fraction of that.