Spatiotemporal control of a multilayered co-axial flow in a 3D printed microchannel with cascaded nozzles

Abstract

Sculpting and stopping multilayered co-flowing streams is challenging due to inhomogeneous pressure distribution within a fluidic circuit composed of multiple interconnected microchannels having variable flow resistances. Here, we have investigated three different flow control methods to effectively stop a multilayered flow inside a 3D-printed microfluidic channel by bringing the average flow velocity from >100 mm s-1 to below a critical velocity of 200 {micro}m s-1 within a certain delay time tD of [~]2s. Firstly, we 3D printed a sequence of three concentric nozzles ([~]75 {micro}m) embedded serially inside the microchannel ([~]200 {micro}m) using a two-photon polymerization (2PP) method. Secondly, we used the 2PP-based 3D printed device to produce a structured coaxial flow of four streams with individual layer thicknesses of O(10 {micro}m) within the outlet section of the microchannel. Thirdly, we removed the pressure gradient across the fluidic circuit, from > 2 bar to [~]0 bar, to stop the multilayered flow and measured tD to assess the performance of the three stop flow methods. During the stop-flow phase, an inhomogeneous pressure gradient across different inlets resulted in a backflow to inlet channels with lower pressures. In the three stop-flow methods investigated, we systemically managed the fluidic capacitance to minimize a dimensionless backflow index (BFI) value from [~]0.3 (worst case) to [~]0.03 (best case) for a total flow rate ranging from 16.8 {micro}l min-1 to 168 {micro}l min-1. Finally, we have recommended the best stop-flow conditions, which resulted in a minimal delay time of tD [~] 2s and a BFI < 0.05.