Micronit BV products

Micronit’s flow cells make excellent tools to sort, count, manipulate and image cells. The dimensions of the microfluidic channels can be in the same range as cell diameters allowing single cell sorting and counting. The superior flatness allows perfect optical imaging, the thin bottom makes it suitable for confocal microscopy. Flow cells can be made out of different materials e.g. fused silica glass that is transparent also in ultraviolet light. Standard flow cells are hermetically sealed. Also resealable flow cells are an option.

To study Thermal, Chemical and Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery, and their effectiveness, the most accurate way is to use a physical rock. However, the use of rocks have several major drawbacks. Lab-on-a-chip technology makes it possible to create surrogate rocks to conduct experiments. Therefore, Micronit has developed three types of Enhanced Oil Recovery chips together with our leading industrial partners. These chips can be used for research into Enhanced Oil Recovery, reservoir engineering and the environment.

Microfluidic droplet generators are excellent tools for generating highly reproducible microsized droplets. This way droplets are generated with much higher precision and repeatability compared to conventional methods. Micronit has more than 15 years of experience of making microfluidic chips such as droplet generators. By tuning the relative viscosities, surface tension, and velocities between the dispersed and the continuous phase droplets of almost any size can be created. Oil-in-water (O/W) droplets can be generated directly using the glass chips. Water-in-oil droplets (W/O) are best formed in hydrophobic channels (coated glass). This to prevent droplets from sticking to the channel walls. Upon request Micronit can coat chips with an hydrophobic anti-stiction coating.

The mixing of fluids in microfluidics can be performed in various ways. One way is using micromixers with so-called folding flow techniques. Folding flow micromixers consist of a chain of elements. In each element the flow is folded upon itself, decreasing the length scale for mixing and thus reducing the mixing time. Other advantages of micromixers are the reduction of the quantities of fluids involved and stable environmental conditions. Folding flow micromixers are also less sensitive to clogging compared to split and recombine mixers. Micronit offers two types of folding flow Micromixers in the web store, the teardrop and swirl micromixer.

The Fluidic Connect PRO and the Fluidic Connect 4515 allow user to make fluidic and electrical connections to microfluidic chips in a user friendly way. With these chip holders you create your lab-on-chip setup within minutes of time.  The chip holders are durable and robust. They are compatible with standard laboratory equipment such as syringe pumps and upright and inverted microscopes.

The EIS-chip (Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy chip) is an inline monitoring system on a single microfluidic chip. The EIS-chip is designed for electrical characterization and counting of droplets, cells or particles. The particles and cells are detected as they pass between the out-of-plane electrodes. These specially designed plane parallel electrodes (figure 2B) achieve a more parallel and uniform electric field when compared to  electrodes on one side of the channel(figure 2A). This increased field uniformity on the EIS-chip enables better particle detection by data acquisition systems. The Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy chip is compatible with an interfacing system based on the Fluidic Connect PRO platform. This system features both fluidic and electrical interfacing to the chip.

Enhanced oil recovery chips can be used to verify calculation models, providing an optical clear surrogate rock. Known geometrical conditions and optical clear chips create optimal conditions to study physical processes that normally occur inside rock formations.

This setup contains a chip holder, chips for enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and tubing. In addition you can select the EOR-chip of your choice: with a uniform, random or physical rock structure and an optional hydrophobic coating. These microfluidic chips can be used in enhanced oil recovery research, reservoir engineering or environmental research. They are used to verify simulation models of rock-pore structures in the EOR field. This setup is the best choice when you use a pressure up to 4-5 bar. In case more pressure is desired our high pressure setup is the best choice.