Miniature one-shot valve

Many microvalves have already been designed and developed. Two types can be found: passive check valves and active valves. However, for some applications, it is needed to open a flow channel only once in order, for example, to trigger a mixing reaction on a micro-bioreactor or to deliver drug sample in smart micropills. In this paper, a new simple one-shot microvalve for single-use applications is described.