Applications of textured surfaces on bubble trapping and degassing for microfluidic devices

This paper introduces a passive degassing mechanism using textured surfaces to trap and transport bubbles, and then using hydrophobic porous membranes to vent out bubbles in a microfluidic system. The bubble trapping ability is achieved by creating nanostructures to promote bubble nucleation and coalescence on the sidewalls of KOH-etched concave pits in a silicon substrate. The substrate, which is bonded with a porous membrane, is placed in a liquid system with chemically generated CO₂ bubbles to examine the degassing ability. The results validate that the bubbles can be easily trapped on the surfaces with nanostructures, and then vented through the porous membrane. Our proposed approach possesses the advantage of simple fabrication, great structure robustness, and effective bubble trapping and removing abilities, which show their great potential as economic, passive means of preventing the gas byproducts from blocking surfaces and improving the efficiency of microfluidic systems during operations.