We report the design of a microcapillary rheometer (μCR) that allows to perform experiments rapidly and in a broad range of shear rates (i.e., from 0.1 to 1000 s⁻¹), using small amounts of material (i.e., just few milligrams). Additionally, multiple measurement parallelization makes it suitable for High-Throughput Rheological Experimentation of polymer melts (HT-Rheo-E).

The novel rheometer consists of a set of three cylindrical microcapillaries in which the fluid flows driven by a controlled pressure. A camera, placed at the capillary exit, records the fluid motion to measure its flow rate, from which the fluid viscosity can be determined. The optimization of the setup allowed for reliable and fast viscosity measurements using ca. 10 mg of material. The current work reports the design of the rheometer and validation measurements on several model fluids. The microfabricated μCR is of potential interest for applications in quality control and research where rapid and repeated measurements using limited milligrams of polymer are required, as well as for High-Throughput-Experimentation of complex fluids (e.g., biological systems).

我们报告了微毛细管流变仪 (μCR) 的设计，该设计允许使用少量材料（即，仅几毫克）在广泛的剪切速率范围内（即，从 0.1 到 1000 s ^-1）快速进行实验。此外，多重测量并行化使其适用于聚合物熔体的高通量流变实验 (HT-Rheo-E)。

新型流变仪由一组三个圆柱形微毛细管组成，其中流体在受控压力的驱动下流动。放置在毛细管出口处的照相机记录流体运动以测量其流速，由此可以确定流体粘度。设置的优化允许使用 ca 进行可靠和快速的粘度测量。10 毫克材料。当前的工作报告了流变仪的设计和对几种模型流体的验证测量。微制造的 μCR 对质量控制和研究中的应用具有潜在的兴趣，其中需要使用有限毫克的聚合物进行快速和重复测量，以及复杂流体（例如生物系统）的高通量实验。