<

Home/Lectures/Lecture Details

Guest Lecture @ Embryo

Lecture for Chemical Engg

Speaker:
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: