Stretchable Material for Microfluidic Applications

Materials selected for microfluidic technology exhibit mechanical properties that can be a source of innovation. For instance, devices that take advantage of rigid (glass, silicon) or soft (elastomer, PDMS) materials, as well as porous materials, such as paper, are widely reported in the literature. In this paper, we illustrate the potentialities of hyper elastic materials for lab-on-chip developments. Two breakthrough examples are reported: (i) a new digital microfluidics approach based on a stretchable membrane for addressing a large range of liquid volumes in complex protocols and (ii) a new low-cost approach for prototyping fully deformable microfluidic devices based on a polymeric foam.