Experimental Aspects of Surface-Driven Capillary Flow in Microfluidics

Abstract At least one of the length, width or height must be less than one millimetre in any microchannel. The fluidic motion in any microchannel is called the microfluidic flow. Surface-driven capillary flow is also called the passive capillary flow in microfluidics. Polymers are common materials to fabricate the microfluidic devices. In this work, different aspects of surface-driven capillary flow are briefly explained. Surface-driven capillary flow has many bioengineering applications that are also mentioned in this work. In this work, author has experimentally demonstrated the surface-driven capillary flow of dyed water in three individual microfluidic devices fabricated by polymeric materials. This work is authored as the study material for proposed elective-course on Microfluidics (M.Tech, Theory) in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Arunachal Pradesh, India. Keywords: Microfluidics, capillary flow, polymer, application