[Music up and under voice of Javier Atencia]
So, how do you build this?
The way we did it is you take a regular glass slide.
Then, you cut with a razor cutter sheets
of double-sided tape with liners and sheets of soft plastic ...
it's like transparencies ...
like optical materials.
So, the way to assemble it would be we take one
of the double-sided tape films ...
it's already pre-cut and we align it
and place it on a glass slide.
Actually, I would remove from here the liner on the back side
so that it actually sticks.
So, these little trenches will form the buried channels.
And above this, we align the plastic with the holes
so that the holes are exactly at the extremes of each trench.So
that way, if you look at it, you've got the hole ...
there is a little trench that is connecting to the other hole.
And this is the way that you form the little channels.
The last part that you put is another part
of double-sided tape and actually,
there's a way we pit this so it will facilitate afterward
when we use the upper part of the channel ...
the device ...
It will help it adhere because the other side also has adhesive
as well, so if I remove from here the liner ...
the other one as well ...
and then you can close it.
No, what I am going to do now is to show how
to introduce liquid here inside, it could be cells.
And the idea is that it's very simple.
Without this type of microfluidic device,
you need to route the liquid inside a chamber
where you grow the cells
and usually the chips are already closed.So,
which means you have
to introduce valves and complex plumbing.
In this case, it's very simple because the chip is open,
so you can access it directly with a pipetter.
So, you can here ...
you just need to press it and it goes all the way through.
You can do it with the other channels as well.
So, even if there are small droplets on the inlets,
it doesn't matter because we are going
to close the chip.What matters is that liquid has gone
through into the little trenches ...
the buried channels.
At this point, I take this liner out and thus it exposes here ...
this is the sticky double-sided tape.I do the same on the lid.
I just take the liner out and now I'm going to close it.
To close it ...
since it's already pre-aligned with the tab, I just press it
down and do this with the fingers.So,
the chip is closed now but in the upper channel,
we've got these droplets but there's no liquid.At this point,
what I do is use my connectors which are magnets with holes.
I place them aligned with the entry holes of the chip.
OK ...
and then on the other side, the same.
At this point, I can start pumping in liquid.
There it is ...So, the chip is now fully assembled.
The upper channel and the lower channel are filled
with liquid ...
And at this point, I can just turn on the pumps.