Short Experimental Report on the Passive Microfluidic Flow in Fluid Mechanics

Abstract

In this work related to experiments, two individual polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) based microfluidic devices (microchannel bends) are fabricated by the following techniques: (a) maskless lithography, (b) hot embossing lithography, and (c) direct bonding technique. Dyed water is chosen as working liquid in this particular work. The CMOS camera is used to capture each passive microfluidic flow of dyed water in the fabricated devices. The effects of channel aspect ratio and centrifugal force on passive microfluidic flow are studied. This present experimental work is compared with earlier published reports by other authors. In future, this work on microfluidics may be useful to study the nanofluidic flow in nanofluidics. Liquid-microflow is slower at higher surfacearea to volume ratio inside the microchannel. The surface-to-volume ratio is generally very high inside any Nanochannel. Therefore, the Liquid-flow may be stopped before the Nanochannel. Hence, only gas-Nanoflow may happen inside the Nanochannel producing the subject of Nanofluidics. Therefore, this work may be useful to manipulate the working gas inside the PMMA based nanofluidic laboratory-on-a-chip systems. During practical experimentations in future, it may be observed that PMMA would not be the most suitable polymer to fabricate the nanochannel. Then, appropriate channel materials should be searched at the initial phase of experimentations on gas nanoflow