Thermally activated control of microfluidic friction

Contrary to the common belief that fluid friction unilaterally determines the thermal characteristics of a microfluidic device, we show here that fluid frictional characteristics of a microfluidic device may essentially be thermally tuned, delineating a non-intuitive two-way coupling. Our experiment...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied physics letters 2012-09, Vol.101 (13)
Main Authors: Dey, Ranabir, DasGupta, Sunando, Chakraborty, Suman
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alterations
Biotechnology
Devices
Electronics
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Friction
Microfluidics
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Summary:Contrary to the common belief that fluid friction unilaterally determines the thermal characteristics of a microfluidic device, we show here that fluid frictional characteristics of a microfluidic device may essentially be thermally tuned, delineating a non-intuitive two-way coupling. Our experiments reveal that the interfacial phenomena triggered by thermal alteration of interfaces with certain topographical and wettability characteristics may reduce the interfacial friction to a considerable extent. This has far-ranging scientific and technological consequences towards obtaining improved throughput in microfluidic devices with applications ranging from biotechnology to electronics cooling.
ISSN:0003-6951
1077-3118
DOI:10.1063/1.4754605