Elastocapillary sequential fluid capture in hummingbird-inspired grooved sheets

Emmanuel Siéfert (), Benoit Scheid, Fabian Brau and Jean Cappello ()
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Emmanuel Siéfert: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Benoit Scheid: Transfers Interfaces and Processes, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Fabian Brau: Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)
Jean Cappello: Transfers Interfaces and Processes, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

Nature Communications, 2025, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: Abstract Passive and effective fluid capture and transport at small scale is crucial for industrial and medical applications, especially for the realisation of point-of-care tests. Performing these tests involves several steps, including capturing biological fluid, aliquoting, reacting with reagents, and reading the results. Ideally, these tests must be fast and offer a large surface-to-volume ratio to achieve rapid and precise diagnostics with a reduced amount of fluid. Such constraints are often contradictory as a high surface-to-volume ratio implies a high hydraulic resistance and hence a decrease in the flow rate. Inspired by the feeding mechanism of hummingbirds, we propose a frugal fluid capture device that takes advantage of elastocapillary deformations to enable concomitant fast liquid transport, aliquoting, and high confinement in the deformed state. The hierarchical design of the device – that consists in vertical grooves stacked on an elastic sheet – enables a two-step sequential fluid capture. Each unit groove mimics the hummingbird’s tongue and closes due to capillary forces when a wetting liquid penetrates, yielding the closure of the whole device in a tubular shape, in the core of which additional liquid is captured. Combining elasticity, capillarity, and viscous flow, we rationalise the fluid-structure interaction at play both when liquid is scarce and abundant. By functionalising the surface of the grooves, such a passive device can concomitantly achieve all the steps of point-of-care tests, opening the way for the design of optimal devices for fluid capture and transport in microfluidics.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-60203-8

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