A medical micropump

A new micropump developed at the University of Utah is made of three layers (upper illustration) of PDMS, a material similar to clear silicone bathtub caulk. The middle layer is thin. Air can pass through it but not liquid. The assembled pump (lower illustration) would be part of a credit-card-sized lab-on-a-chip to make medical lab tests faster and less expensive. In this example, a blood sample is placed in an open well in the top layer (red cylinder on right of both illustrations). A vacuum is applied to control channels in the bottom layer (green in both illustrations). The vacuum draws air through the middle layer, which pulls the blood from the well through hair-sized microchannels (red lines) and into test chambers (the three red circles), where the blood would mix with chemicals, antibodies or some other material needed for a test. Photo Credit: Mark Eddings, University of Utah