Dissolvable bridges for manipulating fluid volumes in paper networks

A capability that is key to increasing the performance of paper microfluidic devices is control of fluid transport in the devices. We present dissolvable bridges as a novel method of manipulating fluid volumes within paper-based devices. We demonstrate and characterize the operation of the bridges, including tunability of the volumes passed from 10 μL to 80 μL, using parameters such as geometry and composition. We further demonstrate the utility of dissolvable bridges in the important context of automated delivery of different volumes of a fluid from a common source to multiple locations in a device for simple device loading and activation.