A Microtas for Liquid Sample Bulk Modulus Screening

This paper presents a micro total analysis system (microTAS) integrating digital microfluidics, acoustic wave microsensors and electronic circuits for rapid sample screening based on liquid bulk modulus measurement. The microsystem is designed for in-field analysis where a number of liquid samples need to be processed in a short time. As a preliminary validation, the microsystem processed 7 glycerol-water mixture samples in less than 3 minutes (from sample loading and delivery to measurement and waste collection). In another experiment, the microsystem processed 6 samples in parallel in just 5 seconds. The experimental results demonstrate the features of fast samples-to-results, low consumption, reliable screening ability and high-throughput potentials.