Concurrent Spatial Mapping of the Elasticity of Heterogeneous Soft Materials via a Polymer-Based Microfluidic Device: A Preliminary Study

This paper presents a preliminary study on achieving concurrent spatial mapping of the spatially-varying elasticity of heterogeneous soft materials via a polymer-based microfluidic device. Comprised of a single compliant polymer rectangular microstructure and a set of electrolyte-enabled distributed resistive transducers, this device is capable of detecting continuous distributed loads. Through pressing a specimen against the device by a rigid probe with precisely-controlled displacements, the spatially-varying elasticity of a specimen is captured by continuous distributed loads acting on the device and is further registered as discrete resistance changes at the locations of the transducers in the device. Concurrent spatial mapping is conducted on homogeneous and heterogeneous specimens, and the related data analysis is performed on the measured results to extract their elasticity. The obtained results demonstrate the feasibility of concurrent spatial mapping of the spatially-varying elasticity of heterogeneous soft materials via this polymer-based microfluidic device.