This paper presents a comparative study on the effects of the in-situ surface modifications performed on “H” type microfluidic systems obtained via additive manufacturing. The microsystem was printed using a polylactic acid filament on an Ender-5 Pro printer. The surface modification of the main channel was done using chloroform by two different methods: vapor smoothing and flushing. The obtained surface roughness was studied using an optical microscope and the ImageJ software, as well as scanning electron microscopy. The effect of the channel surface treatment upon the characteristics of the fluid flow was assessed. The microfluidic systems were used for the dynamic study of biofilm growth of Candida albicans (ATCC 10231). The influence of the surface roughness of the main channel on the formation and growth of the biofilm was studied using quantitative methods, scanning electron microscopy imaging as well as optical coherence tomography.

This mini-review reports the recent advances in the hydrodynamic techniques for formation of bubbles of gas in liquid in microfluidic systems. Systems comprising ducts that have widths of the order of 100 micrometers produce suspensions of bubbles with narrow size distributions. Certain of these systems have the ability to tune the volume fraction of the gaseous phase – over the whole range from zero to one. The rate of flow of the liquids through the devices determines the mechanism of formation of the bubbles – from break-up controlled by the rate of flow of the liquid (at low capillary numbers, and in the presence of strong confinement by the walls of the microchannels), to dynamics dominated by inertial effects (at high Weber numbers). The region of transition between these two regimes exhibits nonlinear behaviours, with period doubling cascades and irregular bubbling as prominent examples. Microfluidic systems provide new and uniquely controlled methods for generation of bubbles, and offer potential applications in micro-flow chemical processing, synthesis of materials, and fluidic optics.