Micropumps for Life Sciences

Improving lives is paramount
With the demand for ever more personalised care, a growing proportion of diagnostic testing is moving out of centralised labs into the doctor’s surgery – and increasingly, the home. This is fuelling innovation in miniaturised, rapid-readout Point of Care (POC) technology. To meet the evolving demands, today’s systems place increasing importance on reduced size, weight and noise, whilst remaining uncompromising on performance.

In parallel, throughput requirements for laboratory systems continue to rise. Many manufacturers are therefore looking at approaches to improving processing speed and system up-time, highlighting the need for innovative approaches and more reliable components.

LEE Ventus has designed the multi award-winning Disc Pump™, which brings advantages in its compact form, silence, vibration-free operation, ultra-smooth flow and precise controllability. Disc Pump™ is enabling life science leaders to push the boundaries of their microfluidic and liquid handling systems, in pursuit of new and radical life-saving medical and diagnostic devices; these in turn deliver better patient outcomes and improved quality-of-life.

• Create compact microfluidic systems with high-precision flow control and response speed.
• Enable the next generation of portable and wearable solutions through compact and lightweight form factor.
• Build high-performance products with exceptional pressure, vacuum and flow capacity.

Use Cases
The following use case examples highlight how the unique features detailed above are allowing our customers to make advances in system design, reliability and improved performance.

• Pressure-Driven Flow (PDF): Also known as “air over liquid”, the gas pressure or vacuum generated by Disc Pump™ can be used to drive liquid flows. The pump can be directly integrated with the system, enabling the creation of miniaturised, portable POC products by eliminating the need for an external compressed air supply or bulky pump and valve systems. Measurement quality and SNR can be improved through the ultra-smooth flow and exceptional stability. Time-to-readout can be shortened through millisecond response times enabling rapid set-point convergence. Finally, viability can be maximised by avoiding direct mechanical pumping, minimising stress on delicate components and materials.

• Pipetting, aspiration and dispense: The compact size, rapid response and high degree of control allows for Disc Pump™ to be used in a range of aspiration, dispense and pipetting functions. Weighing just 5g (1/5 oz) and with no operational noise or vibration, Disc Pump™ is ideal for hand help pipetting.

• Homogenous Droplet Generation: Droplet-based microfluidic technology enables high-throughput screening of single cells. An integrated platform allows for the encapsulation of single cells and reagents in independent aqueous microdroplets dispersed in an immiscible carrier oil and enables the digital manipulation of these reactors at a very high-throughput.

• Pressure Liquid Level Detection (PLLD): The ultra-smooth flow and precise pressure control maximises level detection sensitivity, improving process reliability and speed.