There is an increasing demand for sensitive, flexible, and low‐cost pressure sensing solutions for health monitoring, wearable sensing, robotic and prosthetic applications. Here, the first flexible and pressure‐sensitive microfluidic film is reported, referred to as a microflotronic, with high transparency and seamless integratability with the state‐of‐the‐art microelectronics. The microflotronic film represents the initial effort to utilize a continuous microfluidic layer as the sensing elements for large‐area dynamic pressure mapping applications, and meanwhile an ultrahigh sensitivity of 0.45 kPa−1 has been achieved in a compact, flexible, and transparent packaging. The response time of the device is in the millisecond range, which is at least an order of magnitude faster than that of its conventional flexible solid‐state counterparts. In addition, the fabrication process of the device is fully compatible with the industrial‐scale manufacturing of capacitive touchscreen devices and liquid‐crystal displays. The overall device packaging can be as thin as 200 μm with an optical transparency greater than 80%. Several practical applications were successfully demonstrated, including surface topology mapping and dynamic blood pressure monitoring. The microflotronic devices offer an alternative approach to the solid‐state pressure sensors, by offering an unprecedented sensitivity and ultrafast response time in a completely transparent, flexible and adaptive platform.
Since the 1960s, combination chemotherapy has been widely utilized as a standard method to treat cancer. However, because of the potentially enormous number of drug candidates and combinations, conventional identification methods of the effective drug combinations are usually associated with significantly high operational costs, low throughput screening, laborious and time-consuming procedures, and ethical concerns. In this paper, we present a low-cost, high-efficiency microfluidic print-to-screen (P2S) platform, which integrates combinatorial screening with biomolecular printing for high-throughput screening of anticancer drug combinations. This P2S platform provides several distinct advantages and features, including automatic combinatorial printing, high-throughput parallel drug screening, modular disposable cartridge, and biocompatibility, which can potentially speed up the entire discovery cycle of potent drug combinations. Microfluidic impact printing utilizing plug-and-play microfluidic cartridges is experimentally characterized with controllable droplet volume and accurate positioning. Furthermore, the combinatorial print-to-screen assay is demonstrated in a proof-of-concept biological experiment which can identify the positive hits among the entire drug combination library in a parallel and rapid manner. Overall, this microfluidic print-to-screen platform offers a simple, low-cost, high-efficiency solution for high-throughput large-scale combinatorial screening and can be applicable for various emerging applications in drug cocktail discovery.
Personalized mobile medicine will continue to advance through the development of wearable sensors that can wirelessly provide pertinent health information while remaining unobtrusive, comfortable, low cost, and easy to operate and interpret. It is the intention that the sensor presented hereafter can contribute to such innovation. By applying a combination of emerging microfluidic and electronic technologies, a miniature, flexible, transparent, highly sensitive and wearable pressure sensor with microfluidic elements has been implemented, referred to as a microflotronic device. High sensitivity of 0.1 kPa(-1) and fast response time on the order of tens of milliseconds has been achieved on the microflotronic sensor design. Its sensitivity is among the highest in impedance-based flexible pressure sensors. Once configured into an array, the transparent device can be easily aligned over the target artery to measure blood pressure noninvasively and continuously. In addition, the ultraflexible and thin plastic construct of the microflotronic sensor (of 270 µm in height) can be worn comfortably for extended periods of time. Importantly, the proposed microflotronic sensor has been utilized to perform arterial tonometry with the capability of noninvasive monitoring of arterial blood pressure waveforms in a real-time and continuous fashion.
T. Pan and co‐workers present a flexible, transparent, and pressure‐sensitive microfluidic film, referred to as microflotronics, for large‐area dynamic pressure mapping. On page 6195, utilizing a continuous responsive microfluidic layer as the sensing element, the microflotronic sensors offer an alternative approach to the solid‐state counterparts, by offering an unprecedented sensitivity and ultrafast response time in a completely transparent, flexible, and adaptive package.
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