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Microfluidics Soccer The smallest soccer field to be played upon |
Mircofluidics deals with the agitation of small amounts
of fluids. For the movie below a blue microdroplet is used as a ball. Like
Roberto Carlos at the top of his form we score a 4.8mm bendy free kick (cf. the
original free kick at a distance of 25 yards).
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Small
movie (4.5MB) Large
movie (16.4MB) |
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Original
movie (8.7MB) (downloaded at http://www.soccerclips.net/) |
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This motion is induced by the orange device,
called an IDT. It excites small nano-earthquakes on the surface of the chip,
which hit the droplet from the right. By that, a streaming is created inside
the droplet that moves it to the left.
Depositing the droplet on-chip needs special
syringes as the ‘ball’ only contains 7 billionth liters of water. The chip
holder shown below runs the chip and acts as a soccer stadium. The flood light
of a microscope illuminates the soccer field while it is observed from above.
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The EP1 microfluidics soccer arena |
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Small movie (3MB) Large movie (10MB) |
The chip itself was produced by means of optical
lithography, like a conventional PC-microprocessor. This microfluidics
technology is used for microbiological research experiments at the Chair of experimental physics 1
(University of Augsburg) and commercially by the life-science company Advalytix 
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In this spirit, the microfluidics lab of the University of Augsburg wishes all
soccer fans a great FIFA World Championship. For questions or in case of
interest on our experiments Thomas Frommelt will be glad to
inform you.
