Review on the Capillary Flow Characteristics in Polymer based Microfluidic Systems

Abstract

In this review different effects to control the surface-driven capillary flow in polymer based microfluidic systems. Author has used the polymers like polyimide, SU-8 and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) to fabricate the polymer based microfluidic systems. Author has studied the individual effects of surface wettability, surface free energy, surface chemistry, surface topography, channel aspect ratio, capillary pressure, kinetic energy, centrifugal force, surface area to volume ratio, microfluidic friction, liquid viscosity and effective viscosity on surface-driven microfluidic flow in polymer based microfluidic devices and microfluidic lab-on-a-chip systems, and briefly mentioned the results in this review work. Also, few works of other authors describing the microfluidic flow phenomena are mentioned in this review work.
Keywords: Microfluidics, Nanofluidics, Wettability, Channel aspect ratio, Viscosity, Friction