Development of a hydrodynamic system for miniaturized system flow analysis

The miniaturization and automation of the operations of the analytic process is a basic trend in analytical chemistry as it has proved to be advantageous in the measurement and monitoring of environmental and industrial variables. Although the optimization of micro-fluidic systems has achieved the reduction of the dimensions of the channels it has not, per se, impacted on the complete automation of the system as large, traditional, actuators (valves and pumps) are still being employed. This work shows the development of an autonomous hydrodynamic system to drive solutions and control the injection and the mixing of solutions into a microfluidic structure manufactured in LTCC. The implementation of this simple hydrodynamic system is an alternative to the propulsion of fluids used in flow injection analysis (FIA). It has the further advantage of not relying in large actuator devices producing a system amenable to autonomous and portable applications aimed at in-situ measurements.