Summary
As we step into the 2020s, the era of precision and personalized medicine, drug delivery devices are calling for higher accuracy, precision and reliability, and the natural history of clinical technology quests fundamentally innovative solutions to tackle the residual hard problems, or the Achilles' heel, of the current techniques. Emerging digital and droplet microfluidics offers a potential solution to address such challenges, with its promise for high-precision fluid handling and manipulation at the microscale. In this dissertation, our focus has been to develop novel flowrate monitoring sensors and drug infusion devices for the high-precision infusion therapy at low flowrates. We have first discovered and tapped a new interfacial fluid flow phenomenon, referred to as capillary bi-singularity (CBS), and we have exploited its use for the discretization of continuous flow into droplets, which can be maneuvered for the high-resolution flow monitoring and pumping in a digital manner. Our research projects include: 1) modeling and analysis of the mechanism of CBS; 2) development of a digital droplet flowmetry device based on CBS-enabled flow discretization; 3) development of a digital droplet infusion device by the integration of a CBS-enabled flow discretizer and an electronically-controlled valving unit. The newly discovered CBS phenomenon and the relevant exploited technologies will potentially open up new insights for the next-generation flow monitoring and control in various medical infusion devices, among other biomedical applications.
Read More ↓Edition Statements
- Publication Date:2020
Thesis Information
- Degree:Ph.D.
- University:University of California, Davis
- Advisor/Supervisor:Pan, Tingrui
- Pages:131
Publication Statements
- Language:eng
- Publication Date:2020
Edition Identifiers
- proquest:2466043812
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