| Researchers use the forces of physics to manipulate things on a very small scale: tiny volumes of fluids thousands of times smaller than a dew drop. Microfluidics is a new technology that deals with the experimental, theoretical, and computational study of the behavior of fluids in volumes on the order of the micron. It also looks at the physical/chemical interaction of those liquids with other fluid phases and solid surfaces. Microfluidic systems have a wide range of potential applications. Systems that might use this technology include inkjet printing, blood-cell-separation, biochemical assays, chemical synthesis, genetic analysis, drug screening, electrochromatography, surface micromachining, laser ablation, and mechanical micromilling. Early microfluidic devices were made in silicon and glass using photolithography and etching techniques borrowed from the microelectronics industry. More recently, soft lithography—fabrication methods based on printing and molding organic materials are also used. We encounter some interesting properties when we deal with such small quantities of fluid. Surface tension, for example, tends not to matter when we are dealing with greater water volumes begin to dominate the dynamics at these scales. The Reynolds number, which determines the turbulence of a flow, is extremely low at small scales, meaning that the fluid flow stays pretty much laminar. This makes some aspects of microfluidics more convenient and predictable, while others become more challenging. Microfluidics research at Kodak deals with the behavior, precise control and manipulation of fluids — typically measured in nano- and picoliters — in miniaturized systems. This multidisciplinary field calls upon physics, chemistry, and nanotechnology, with practical applications in the design of systems that use very small volumes of fluids. Areas of interests include printing and thin film deposition and patterning. Some of the research topics are: - Physics of complex fluids
- MEMS-based microfluidic devices
- Micro fabrication
- Computational fluid dynamics
- Atomic layer deposition
- Plasma physics
- Super critical CO2
|