Design and Characterization
of a Microfluidic Well Plate
for Advanced Liquid Handling
and Sample Preparation:
Applications in Proteomics 

Abstract

Accurate and reliable liquid handling is a cornerstone of experimental life sciences, underpinning applications ranging from biochemical assays to single-cell analysis. Commercial swinging-bucket centrifuges enable centrifuge-driven sample preparation, where each bucket processes a well plate preloaded with pipetted samples. Traditional approaches rely on manual pipetting or complex robotic systems, which can be labor-intensive, costly, and difficult to integrate with miniaturized workflows. While standard well plates are simple to use and compatible with most laboratory instruments, their functionality is limited, preventing the integration of advanced operations such as liquid manipulation and on-demand, reliable liquid transfer.

Microfluidics offers an attractive pathway to automate, downscale, and parallelize liquid handling, yet translating individual microfluidic operations into robust, scalable, and wellplate–compatible platforms remains challenging. Centrifugal microfluidics, in particular, leverages rotational forces to drive fluid motion without external pumps, enabling precise volume downscaling (metering and/or aliquoting), mixing, and liquid transfer within compact devices. Despite these advantages, implementing reliable unit operations in standard wellplate formats requires careful consideration of geometric, operational, and environmental parameters, including chamber dimensions, fluid properties, centrifugal acceleration, and evaporation, while simultaneously supporting such advanced functions.

This dissertation addresses these challenges by developing WellOmics, a modu lar centrifugal microfluidic well plate designed to integrate multiple advanced liquid handling functions within the footprint of a standard plate. Each module is independently operable or combinable, enabling scalable, leak-free, and reproducible workflows compatible with conventional swinging-bucket centrifuges. The work systematically investigates metering accuracy and reproducibility, identifies geometric and operational thresholds governing liquid transfer via a flipping strategy, demonstrates robust cell trapping under controlled conditions, and quantifies evaporation in confined microfluidic circuits.

Jury members  

• Tristan Gilet (Uliege), Promotor
• Howard A. Stone (Princeton Uni.)
• Roland Zengerle (Uni. of Freiburg)
• David Kinahan (Dublin City Uni.)
• Gabriel Mazzucchelli (Uliege)
• Vincent Terrapon (Uliege), President

Videoconference available on Teams

Participation : Fill out the form