Microfluidics is a multidisciplinary field that is changing the way how biological research is being performed, enabling new applications and accelerating the existing ones. However, one of its most important drawbacks is the lack of technological tools to facilitate its widespread use. In this paper we present a new pressure and flow control device for the high-performance control of microfluidic applications. The main advantage of our device is that all pneumatic and electronic components, including the communications and control circuitry, are fully embedded inside the apparatus. Therefore, this device can be used as a standalone laboratory equipment and it can also be remotely operated from a personal computer. The microfluidic application used to demonstrate the performance of the proposed tool is the generation of alginate (1% sodium alginate solution) droplets in mineral oil. The generation of a stable stream of uniform droplets validates the good performance of our control device.

中文翻译：

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用于微流体应用的全嵌入式流量控制装置

微流体是一个多学科领域，它正在改变生物研究的进行方式，实现新应用并加速现有应用。然而，其最重要的缺点之一是缺乏促进其广泛使用的技术工具。在本文中，我们提出了一种新的压力和流量控制装置，用于微流体应用的高性能控制。我们设备的主要优点是所有气动和电子元件，包括通信和控制电路，都完全嵌入设备内部。因此，该设备可以作为独立的实验室设备使用，也可以通过个人计算机远程操作。用于证明所提出工具性能的微流体应用是在矿物油中生成藻酸盐（1% 藻酸钠溶液）液滴。稳定的均匀液滴流的产生验证了我们控制设备的良好性能。