Integrated Design Process

The tasks to design droplet microfluidic networks are often conducted manually using calculations, simplifications, as well as assumptions and require the consideration of a large number of design parameters. Thus far, no integrated design process for this is available. In order to improve this status quo, the chapters of Part II of this book presented a variety of tools for microfluidics in general, which supports designers in single tasks like simulation, dimensioning, or designing meanders. Besides that, the chapters of Part III of this book additionally introduced dedicated methods for microfluidic networks based on passive droplet routing. By this, several automatic methods are available that support the designer in major tasks of the design process of droplet microfluidic networks in general as well as when the networks are based on passive droplet routing in particular. This chapter demonstrates that these methods can even be combined to an integrated design process for designing microfluidic networks based on passive droplet routing.