Singular behavior of microfluidic pulsatile flow due to dynamic curving of air-fluid interfaces

Abstract

A theoretical and experimental study shows that the coupled effect of interfaces and pulsatile forcing of fluid slugs, at microscales, allows for controlling the magnitude of flow velocity by simply changing the frequency of the driving. This behavior, which at low frequencies, is radically different from that of a single fluid, could potentially be exploited in organ-on-a-chip devices to tune the physiological mechanical conditions of cells, or to study how cells would respond to various nonphysiological stresses.