vi
Preface
designs for the respective needs and fabrication settings. Besides that, the dedicated
methods for passive droplet routing allow for (1) designing application-specific
architectures for a given set of experiments, as well as (2) generating droplet
sequences realizing the respective experiments. All these methods eventually lead
to an integrated design process for microfluidic networks based on passive droplet
routing.
Overall, this book provides both, a comprehensive “toolbox” for designers
working on droplet microfluidic networks in general and an integrated design
flow for the passive droplet routing mechanism in particular. The suitability of all
presented methods has been evaluated and confirmed by simulations, by fabricated
devices, and directly by stakeholders from the microfluidic domain. For example, a
conducted case study successfully shows that the proposed methods allow to reduce
the design time of a complex microfluidic network from one person month to a
single day. By additionally providing open-source implementations, a large user
group within the domain of microfluidics is reached.
This book eventually is the result of several years of research conducted at the
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. Moreover, since microfluidics is a highly
interdisciplinary field, many results presented in this book would not have been
possible without the fruitful and inspiring cooperations we enjoyed in those years. In
particular, we are indebted to Werner Haselmayr, Medina Hamidovic, Prof. Andreas
Springer, and Philip Ebner from the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Prof. Carolyn
Ren and Xiaoming Chen from the University of Waterloo, as well as Philipp Frank,
Sebastian Häfner, and Prof. Andreas Richter from the TU Dresden. Besides that, we
sincerely thank the coauthors of all the papers that formed the basis of this book.
Furthermore, we would like to thank our own group, the Institute for Integrated
Circuits, for always providing a stimulating and enjoyable environment in which
scientific ideas indeed can flourish. Finally, we would like to thank Springer Nature
and especially Charles “Chuck” Glaser for publishing this work.
Linz, Austria
Andreas Grimmer
April 2019
Robert Wille
Preface
designs for the respective needs and fabrication settings. Besides that, the dedicated
methods for passive droplet routing allow for (1) designing application-specific
architectures for a given set of experiments, as well as (2) generating droplet
sequences realizing the respective experiments. All these methods eventually lead
to an integrated design process for microfluidic networks based on passive droplet
routing.
Overall, this book provides both, a comprehensive “toolbox” for designers
working on droplet microfluidic networks in general and an integrated design
flow for the passive droplet routing mechanism in particular. The suitability of all
presented methods has been evaluated and confirmed by simulations, by fabricated
devices, and directly by stakeholders from the microfluidic domain. For example, a
conducted case study successfully shows that the proposed methods allow to reduce
the design time of a complex microfluidic network from one person month to a
single day. By additionally providing open-source implementations, a large user
group within the domain of microfluidics is reached.
This book eventually is the result of several years of research conducted at the
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. Moreover, since microfluidics is a highly
interdisciplinary field, many results presented in this book would not have been
possible without the fruitful and inspiring cooperations we enjoyed in those years. In
particular, we are indebted to Werner Haselmayr, Medina Hamidovic, Prof. Andreas
Springer, and Philip Ebner from the Johannes Kepler University Linz, Prof. Carolyn
Ren and Xiaoming Chen from the University of Waterloo, as well as Philipp Frank,
Sebastian Häfner, and Prof. Andreas Richter from the TU Dresden. Besides that, we
sincerely thank the coauthors of all the papers that formed the basis of this book.
Furthermore, we would like to thank our own group, the Institute for Integrated
Circuits, for always providing a stimulating and enjoyable environment in which
scientific ideas indeed can flourish. Finally, we would like to thank Springer Nature
and especially Charles “Chuck” Glaser for publishing this work.
Linz, Austria
Andreas Grimmer
April 2019
Robert Wille