Exercise 5

Task 1: Electrostatic pump

• What is the stroke volume of the electrostatic pump?

• What is the pressure, that acts on the membrane during activation?

Maximal stroke frequency 1 kHz, Maximal Flow rate 300µL/min, Membrane diameter 4000µm,
Membrane thickness 20µm

Task 2: Diffusion of oxygen over membrane and cell culture

For cell culturing on a microfluidic chip, an oxygen supply channel is placed next to the culturing
chamber with a hydrogel membrane in between. How wide can the cell culture be, in order to be
supplied with enough oxygen?

Boundary conditions:
• Diffusion coefficient of oxygen in agarose hydrogel is the same as in water
• The oxygen concentration in the gas supply channel is constant
• All cells are equally distributed within the chamber and the oxygen consumption rate (OCR)
of a mammalian cell is independent of time, location and oxygen concentration.

h = 380 µm, wHg = 1140 µm, wcc = 5 mm, filling factors γf , c0 = 0.21 mol/m3, D = 2.4 × 10−9 m2/s ,
OCR = 20 × 10−18 mol/cell/s , Az = 4 × 10−10 m²