High-Throughput Micro-Debubblers for Bubble Removal with Sub-Microliter Dead Volume

We present the fabrication and evaluation of microdebubblers that are able to remove large bubbles while keeping a very low dead volume. The devices use a polytetrafluoroethylene membrane that is permeable to air in order to filter air bubbles out of an aqueous sample. The dead volume of the devices is less than one microliter, but bubbles as large as 60 microliters can be removed. This simple solution can be very useful for microfluidic devices for chemical or biological analysis that suffer from channel clogging due to the presence of bubbles in their sample. One embodiment is particularly suited for buffer solutions with living cells.