Microfluidics is a multidisciplinary field comprising physics, chemistry, engineering and biotechnology that studies the behavior of fluids at the microscale and mesoscale, that is, fluids at volumes thousands of times smaller than a common droplet. It also concerns the design of systems in which such small volumes of fluids will be used.
The behavior of fluids at the microscale can differ from 'macrofluidic' behavior in that factors such as surface tension, energy dissipation, and electrokinetics start to dominate the system. Microfluidics studies how these behaviors change, and how they can be worked around, or exploited for new uses.
It is a new science, having emerged only in the 1990s, so the number of applications for this technology is currently small. However, it is potentially significant in a wide range of technologies. Microfluidics is used in the development of DNA microarray technology, micro-thermal and micro-propulsion technologies, and lab-on-a-chip technology.
External links
Additional Information (External)
- Microfluidics Tutorial from Paul Yager's Lab at the University of Washington
- myFluidix.com
- MIFLUS - Microfluidics Terminology tree
Academic / Government Laboratories
- Bios: The Lab-on-a-Chip Group at the University of Twente, Netherlands
- N. T. Nguyen Microfluidics Lab, at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Charles Yang's Lab at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
- Stanford Microfluidics Lab
- Microsystem Technology Lab, at The Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
- UCSB Microfluidics Lab
- Purdue Microfluidics Lab
- Experimental Soft Condensed Matter Group, at Harvard University, Boston
- George Whitesides's Lab, at Harvard University, Boston
- Shuichi Takayama's Lab, at the University of Michigan
- Rustem Ismagilov's Lab, at the 0niversity of Chicago
- Noo Li Jeon's Lab at UCI
- Bio-POEMS, at Berkeley
- Stephen Quake's Lab at Stanford University
- Albert Folch's Lab at the University of Washington
- David Beebe's Lab, at the University of Wisconsin
- Sandia National Labs Microfluidics Department
- Paul Yager's Lab at the University of Washington
- T. Kitamori's Lab at The University of Tokyo, Japan
- Sabeth Verpoorte's lab at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands
- University of Victoria Microfluidics Lab
Companies
- Micralyne, MEMS foundry
- Gyros AB
- Micronit Microfluidics, BV
- Sensirion Inc., Microfluidic flow sensors
- Fluidigm Corp.
- Micronics, Inc.
- Nanostream, Inc.
- Caliper Life Sciences
- Cascade Microtech, Microfluidics Metrology Systems
- Cellix Ltd. - Microfluidic biochips, instrumentation and analysis software for cell based assays
- Protea Biosciences Inc., Microfluidic Products geared towards Biological Applications
- Edge Embossing LLC, Plastic microfluidics design and manufacturing through soft embossing
- MiniFAB - Design, fabrication and integration of polymer microengineered systems
Books
- "Fundamentals and Application of Microfluidics" by N. T. Nguyen and S. Wereley
- "Separation Methods In Microanalytical Systems" by J. P. Kutter and Y. Fintschenko, eds.
See Also
- μFluids@Home—a distributed computing project for the computer simulation of two-phase fluid behavior in microgravity and microfluidics problems Website