PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Matthew J. Williams
AU  - Nicholas K. Lee
AU  - Joseph A. Mylott
AU  - Nicole Mazzola
AU  - Adeel Ahmed
AU  - Vinay V. Abhyankar
TI  - A low-cost, rapidly integrated debubbler (RID) module for microfluidic cell culture applications
AID  - 10.1101/629642
DP  - 2019 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 629642
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/05/07/629642.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/05/07/629642.full
AB  - Microfluidic platforms use controlled fluid flow to provide physiologically relevant biochemical and biophysical cues to cultured cells in a well-defined and reproducible manner. In these systems, undisturbed flows are critical and air bubbles entering microfluidic channels can result in device delamination or cell damage. To prevent bubble entry, we report a low-cost, Rapidly Integrated Debubbler (RID) module that is simple to fabricate, inexpensive, and easily combined with existing experimental systems. We demonstrate successful removal of air bubbles spanning three orders of magnitude with a maximum removal rate (dV/dt)max = 1.5 mL min−1, at flow rates corresponding to physiological fluid-induced wall shear stresses (WSS) needed for biophysical stimulation studies on cultured mammalian cell populations.