Zhu Y., Bui A.
CSIRO Australia, AU
Keywords: Joule heating, microfluidic separation
The main objective of the current work is to investigate the thermal performance, in particular Joule heating of polymer microfluidic chips involving electrokinetically driven flows using experimental and numerical methods. Most of the work focused on the glass capillaries used in conventional capillary electrophoresis instruments. Limited studies have been carried out to investigate the effect of Joule heating on microfluidic chips, especially those made of polymer materials. There is no data available to validate the CFD results using the whole-chip approach. The current study is the first to use such an approach for both modeling and validating. The temperature distributions on the surface of the microfluidic chip was measured by the JADE-MWIR Advanced Thermography Station from CEDIP Infrared Systems. The numerical study was carried out using the multiphysics computational fluid dynamics (CFD) package CFD-Ace+. New results have been obtained for a commercially available microfluidic separation chip made of polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) using different buffer strength and operating conditions. These results could provide useful information for the operation of the chip and the design of similar microfluidic chips.
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 2, Technical Proceedings of the 2006 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 2
Published: May 7, 2006
Pages: 655 - 658
Industry sectors: Medical & Biotech | Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: Micro & Bio Fluidics, Lab-on-Chip
ISBN: 0-9767985-7-3