ABSTRACT
Microfluidics is a field of science driven by the vision of entire biological and chemical laboratories developed on a miniaturized silicon or polymer chip. A category of microfluidic devices called tubeless microfluidic devices brings the added advantage of removing the dead volume that would be present in tubing. Evaporation is an important topic in tubeless microfluidics. The open air–liquid interface and the potential for large surface area to volume ratios present in tubeless microfluidic devices make evaporation a major issue. An advantage of tubeless microfluidic devices is that they can be used for high-throughput applications, most of which currently use standard wells for performing assays. Therefore, an important component of analyzing tubeless microfluidic devices is to understand fluidic wash inside them. The Wheeler laboratory at the University of Toronto developed a different type of tubeless device. Their design used a digital microfluidic setup to manipulate nanoliter-sized droplets on an open surface that contains an array of electrodes.
