Course on Microfluidics

Place and time:

Room:
Lectures : 0.111, Cauerstrasse 6.
Tutorials: 0.139, Cauerstrasse 6.

News:

Overview:

The ability to create structures and patterns on micron and sub-micron length scales has triggered a wide range of scientific investigations, as well as the development of many miniaturized devices and systems for transporting and manipulating fluids with unprecedented control and precision. These types of investigations, broadly identified under the central theme of microfluidics and nanofluidics, have rekindled the interest in a classical area of fluid dynamics: low-Reynolds-number flows. Microscale transport processes and microfluidics are becoming increasingly important in several emerging applications due to their inherent advantages such as high transfer coefficients (on account of large surface area to volume ratios), efficient process management, miniaturization of devices for specific applications, and addressability of cellular length scales. The objective of this short-term Course will be to highlight some interesting avenues of research and development in microfluidics, following the underlying fundamentals. One particularly interesting aspect of such studies is the imaginative use of engineering, biology, chemistry and physics to achieve devices with specific functionalities, with their applications ranging from biotechnological and biomedical engineering to electronic chip cooling and inkjet printing. The Lecture Series designed for this Course will highlight on some of these challenging applications and the fundamental scientific issues that need to be addressed in responding to the pertinent technological challenges, with particular emphasis on Mathematical Modeling and Numerical Simulation strategies specific to such applications.

Lecture Topics:

1. From Classical Fluid Mechanics to Microfluidics: A Perspective
2. An Overview of Microfluidic Actuation Mechanisms
3. Surface Tension Driven Flows and Capillary Transport
4. Boundary Conditions in Microfluidics: Slip or no Slip?
5. Electrokinetics in Microfluidics
6. Examples of Applications: Bio-Microfluidics
7. Nanofluidics

Tutorials/ Demonstrations

1. Solution of Quasi One-dimensional Boundary Value Problems in Microfluidics (using MATLAB)
2. Use of Finite Volume Method for Micro-flow Analysis: Applications in Electroosmotic Transport
3. Particle Transport Simulation in Microflows (Eulerian/ Lagrangian Coupling)
4. Lattice Boltzmann Method for Microflows
5. Molecular Dynamics Simulation for Nanoflows
6. Micro-flow Visualization and Image Processing

Literature