Design, fabrication and testing of a capillary microfluidic system with stop-and-go valves using EWOD technology

This article presents the successful design, fabrication and testing of a miniaturized system integrating capillarity and electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) technology in a microfluidic network. In particular, the change in hydrophobicity occurring at the interphase between a capillary channel and a hydrophobic layer has been exploited using EWOD as a stop-go fluid valve. The combination of capillary forces and EWOD technology to control the fluid movement opens the possibility to implement a wide variety of microfluidic configurations to perform different biomedical assays with a low-power consumption process. These assays could be easily and inexpensively integrated in lab-on-chip systems featuring small size and high-throughput characteristics.