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Guest Lecture @ Embryo

Lecture for Chemical Engg

Speaker:Ketan Bhatt
Post Doctoral Fellow, UIUC, Phd, Chemical and Biomolecular Engg, NCSU, 2006, BE(Hons) Chemical Engg, BITS Pilani, 2001
Date:September 30 2006
Title:Microfluidics - A Primer
Venue:5104-Pilani
  

Abstract:
Microfluidics deals with the behavior, precise control and manipulation of micro- liter and nano- liter volumes of fluids. It is a multidisciplinary field comprising physics, chemistry, engineering and biotechnology, with practical applications to the design of systems in which such small volumes of fluids will be used. Microfluidics emerged in the 1990s and now is used in the development of DNA chips, micro- propulsion, micro- thermal technologies, and lab-on-a-chip technology.

The behavior of fluids at the microscale can differ from 'macrofluidic' behavior as factors such as surface tension, energy dissipation, and fluidic resistance start to dominate the system. Microfluidics studies how these behaviors change, and how they can be worked around, or exploited for new uses. At these scales (channel diameters of around 10 to several hundred micrometers), some interesting and unintuitive properties appear. The Reynolds number, which characterizes the presence of turbulent flow, is extremely low; therefore the flow will remain Laminar. As a result, two fluids joining for example will not mix easily and only diffusion alone will cause the two compounds to mingle.

This lecture will introduce the listeners to the various concepts in microfluidics. It will outline the challenges and applications in the field of channel based microfluidic systems. It will also discuss the field of droplet based microfluidics and present some of the author’s work in this area.

Biography:
Ketan Bhatt received his B.E. (Honors) in Chemical Engineering from BITS, Pilani in 2001. He joined Professor Orlin Velev’s research group at North Carolina State University in Raleigh soon after. He received his M. S. in Chemical in 2003 and his Ph. D. in Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering in 2006. His graduate research was focused on the manipulation and assembly of colloidal particles and fluids using alternating electric fields. His research work has lead to publications in such prestigious journals as Nature and Nature Materials. He has accepted a post doctoral research position in Professor Jennifer Lewis’s research group at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign starting September 2006.