Micro Fluidics

Micro fluidics revolves around handling the behavior, precise control and manipulation of fluids that are geometrically constrained to a small, typically sub-millimeter scale. Micro particularly means certain features such as small volumes, small size, low energy consumption or effects of the micro domain. This field intersects with engineering, physics, chemistry, micro-technology and biotechnology with practical applications to the design of systems in which such small volumes of fluids will be used. Micro fluidics rose to prominence in the 1980s and is used in the improvement of inkjet print heads, DNA chips, lab-on-a-chip technology, micro-propulsion, and micro-thermal technologies.

Different behavior change of micro fluidics

The behavior of fluids at the micro scale can vary from macro-fluidic behavior in certain factors like surface tension, energy dissipation and the resistance begins to dominate the system. Micro fluidics learns about these behaviors change and about they can be worked out or utilized for several new uses. At small scales some interesting and at times unintuitive elements arrive. Especially, the Reynolds number which relates the effect of momentum of a fluid to the effect of viscosity can turn into very low.

A vital result of this is that fluids, when side by side do not necessarily combine in the conventional sense. Rather they are transported between them that are frequently through diffusion. High specificity of chemical and physical properties can also be made sure resulting in more uniform reaction conditions and higher products in single and multi-step reactions.

Micro fluidic structures

Micro fluidic structures comprise micro-pneumatic systems, for example, Microsystems for the dealing of off-chip fluids and micro fluidic structures for the on-chip dealing of nano and picoliter volumes. Even today, the most profitable business application of micro fluids is the inkjet print head. Notable studies have been done on the application of micro fluids for the production of industrially relevant amounts of material. Developments in micro fluidics technology are transforming molecular biology procedures for enzymatic analysis, DNA analysis and proteomics. The fundamental concept of micro fluidic biochips is to integrate assay functions like detection, as well as sample pretreatment and sample preparation on one chip.

Recent applications

An evolving application field for biochips is clinical pathology particularly the instant point of care diagnosis of diseases. Further, micro fluidics based devices capable of constant sampling and real time testing water samples for biochemical toxins and other dangerous pathogens can serve as an always on bio smoke alarm for early warning. And these technologies are supported by the manipulation of constant liquid flow through micro fabricated channels.

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