日時：	2026年7月17日（金）14：00～15：00
場所：	医生研１号館１階会議室（134室） Conference Room (Room 134), 1st Floor, Bldg. No.1
演者：	Leon Gebhard　PhD Student Physical Microfluidics and Bioengineering École Polytechnique and Institut Pasteur
演題：	Designing single-layer PDMS devices for micron to millimeter-scale deformations

講演要旨

The elasticity of PDMS has been instrumental in advancing important microfluidic technologies, ranging from early valves to sophisticated organ-on-a-chip systems. Still, most designs that allow the deformation of microfluidic channels require complex multi-layer PDMS architectures or external actuators. To address this limitation Jain and Belkadi (Biofabrication, 2024), recently introduced a device in which a linear microfluidic channel can be deformed through the pressurisation of two adjacent air chambers. While they demonstrated how the channel ceiling deformation can be leveraged to compress biological materials, it remains unknown how the device geometry influences this deformation.

Here, we performed a systematic numerical and experimental study on variants of this device, through which the height of the PDMS layer is identified as the main feature that determines the ceiling deformation. Three modes of channel deformation are identified as the geometry is varied: a U shape with a central minimum, a W shape with two minima and a central maximum, or an inverse U shape with an upward-bulging single maximum. The numerical results are validated in experiments that reproduce the three modes for the predicted geometries and demonstrate vertical ceiling deformations ranging from a few microns to the millimeter scale. The generality of this approach is demonstrated for two example applications: A fully closing single-layer microfluidic valve and an optical lens of controllable anisotropic magnification. This work leverages the rapid prototyping enabled by 3D printing or micro-milling to open new perspectives in microfluidic actuation.

20260717_LeonGebhard

Host: Hirofumi Shintaku, shintaku[@]infront.kyoto-u.ac.jp