Profiling a soft solid layer to passively control the conduit shape in a compliant microchannel during flow

The shape of a microchannel during flow through it is instrumental to understanding the physics that govern various phenomena ranging from rheological measurements of fluids to separation of particles and cells. Two commonly used approaches for obtaining a desired channel shape (for a given application) are (i) fabricating the microchannel in the requisite shape and (ii) actuating the microchannel walls during flow to obtain the requisite shape. However, these approaches are not always viable. We propose an alternative, passive approach to a priori tune the elastohydrodynamics in a microsystem toward achieving a predetermined (but not prefabricated) flow geometry when the microchannel is subjected to flow. That is, we use the interaction between a soft solid layer, the viscous flow beneath it, and the shaped rigid wall above it to tune the fluid domain's shape. Specifically, we study a parallel-wall microchannel whose top wall is a slender soft coating of arbitrary thickness attached to a rigid platform. We derive a nonlinear differential equation for the soft coating's fluid-solid interface, which we use to infer how to achieve specific conduit shapes during flow. Using this theory, we demonstrate the tuning of four categories of microchannel geometries, which establishes, via a proof-of-concept, the viability of our modeling framework. We also explore slip length patterning on the rigid bottom wall of the microchannel, a common technique in microfluidics, as an additional "handle" for microchannel shape control. However, we show that this effect is much weaker in practice.