Biofilm responses to smooth flow fields and chemical gradients in novel microfluidic flow cells.

We present two novel microfluidic flow cells developed to provide reliable control of flow distributions and chemical gradients in biofilm studies. We developed a single-inlet microfluidic flow cell to support biofilm growth under a uniform velocity field, and a double-inlet flow cell to provide a very smooth transverse concentration gradient. Both flow cells consist of a layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) bonded to glass cover slips and were fabricated using the replica molding technique.