Highly effective mixing in microchannels is important for most chemical reactions conducted in microfluidic chips. To obtain a rigid and chemically resistant micromixer system at low cost, we fabricated a Y-shaped microchannel with built-in mixer structures by static liquid photolithography (SLP) from methacrylated polyvinylsilazane (MPVSZ) as an inorganic polymer photoresist which was then con...

This study develops a hybrid numerical scheme based on a molecular dynamics (MD) algorithm and the GROMACS protein data bank to analyze the thermal bio-flow of alanine molecules in a microchannel. The numerical results show that the velocity profiles in the microchannel are highly dependent on both global effects, i.e. the effective channel width and local effects, i.e. the thermal boundary con...

......................................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1. GENERAL INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1 Microchannels in Biomedical Devices .................................................................................. 1 Research Motivation ............................

This paper analyzes compressible gaseous flow through a three-dimensional straight uniform rectangular microchannel, and reports a set of asymptotic solutions. This work represents an extension of previous work on compressible flows through a two-dimensional microchannel. First, we choose the ratio of Dh/L as the small expansion parameter, where Dh and L are the channel’s hydrodynamic diameter ...

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Pluronic F127 fibers, 1.5 mm in diameter, were sacrificed in type I collagen, creating a central looped microchannel. 100μL polyculture cell suspension mixture of 5 x 10 cells/mL of human foreskin fibroblasts and 5 x 10 cells/mL of human aortic smooth muscle cells was seeded into the microchannel. The following day, a 100μL cell suspension of 5 x 10 cells/mL of human plac...

Secondary flow plays a critical function in a microchannel, such as a micromixer, because it can enhance heat and mass transfer. However, there is no experimental method to visualize the secondary flow and the associated mixing pattern in a microchannel because of difficulties in high-resolution, non-invasive, cross-sectional imaging. Here, we simultaneously imaged and quantified the secondary ...

This paper presents a numerical study of controlling the flow rate and the concentration in a microchannel network by utilizing induced-charge electrokinetic flow (ICEKF). ICEKF over an electrically conducting surface in a microchannel will generate vortices, which can be used to adjust the flow rates and the concentrations in different microchannel branches. The flow field and concentration fi...

As the scale of devices becomes small, thermal control and heat dissipation from these devices can be effectively accomplished through the implementation of microchannel passages. The small passages provide a high surface area to volume ratio that enables higher heat transfer rates. High performance microchannel heat exchangers are also attractive in applications where space and/or weight const...

The deformation and recovery behaviors of multilayer microcapsules were investigated after being forced to flow through a microchannel. The microchannel device with a constriction (5.7 μm in depth) in the middle was designed, and the multilayer microcapsules with different size and layer thickness (and thereby different mechanical strength) were used. Deformation in the microchannel was observe...

A robust and low dead volume world-to-chip interface for thermoplastic microfluidics has been developed. The high pressure fluidic port employs a stainless steel needle inserted into a mating hole aligned to an embedded microchannel, with an interference fit used to increase pressure resistance. Alternately, a self-tapping threaded needle screwed into a mating hole is also demonstrated. In both...