A conceptual design and FE analysis of a piezoceramic actuated dispensing system for microdrops generation in microarray applications

In recent years, both the diagnostic and pharmaceutical industries have begun to seek improved methods of reagent dispensing that would enable them to reduce the amount of reagent used, improve the accuracy and repeatability of the quantities dispensed, and generally expedite the processing of assays and microarrays. This paper presents a design of a dispensing system for microdrops generation operated in a drop-on-demand mode using a non-contact liquid transfer method. Unlike existing methods for droplets generation, which operate in an open-loop, this system operates in a closed-loop manner. Therefore, the system can potentially generate droplets with very high accuracy up to several picoliters in order to generate very high-density microarrays. Detailed finite element analysis is used to optimize the design, assess the performance of the system, and define suitable operating parameters.