Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- 2 Preparatory Concepts
- 3 The Governing Equations for an Electrically Conducting Fluid
- 4 The Essentials of Viscous Flow
- 5 Heat and Mass Transfer Phenomena in Channels and Tubes
- 6 Introduction to Electrostatics
- 7 Elements of Electrochemistry and the Electrical Double Layer
- 8 Elements of Molecular and Cell Biology
- 9 Electrokinetic Phenomena
- 10 Essential Numerical Methods
- 11 Molecular Simulations
- 12 Applications
- Appendix A Matched Asymptotic Expansions
- Appendix B Vector Operations in Curvilinear Coordinates
- Appendix C Web Sites
- Appendix D A Semester Course Syllabus
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction and Overview
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction and Overview
- 2 Preparatory Concepts
- 3 The Governing Equations for an Electrically Conducting Fluid
- 4 The Essentials of Viscous Flow
- 5 Heat and Mass Transfer Phenomena in Channels and Tubes
- 6 Introduction to Electrostatics
- 7 Elements of Electrochemistry and the Electrical Double Layer
- 8 Elements of Molecular and Cell Biology
- 9 Electrokinetic Phenomena
- 10 Essential Numerical Methods
- 11 Molecular Simulations
- 12 Applications
- Appendix A Matched Asymptotic Expansions
- Appendix B Vector Operations in Curvilinear Coordinates
- Appendix C Web Sites
- Appendix D A Semester Course Syllabus
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Micro- and nanofluidics
Analyzing and computing fluid flow at small scales is becoming increasingly important because of the emergence of new technologies such as the ability to construct microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). These systems may be used for drug delivery and its control; DNA and protein manipulation and transport; and the desire to manufacture laboratories on a microchip for rapid molecular analysis, requiring the modeling of flows on a length scale approaching molecular dimensions. On these small scales, new flow features appear that are not seen in macroscale flows.
Because of the large surface-to-volume ratio in nanochannels, surface properties become enormously important. Because the pressure drop Δp ˜ 1/h 3, it is prohibitively large for a nanoscale channel. Thus fluid, biomaterials such as proteins, and other colloidal particles are most often transported electrokinetically, and the art of designing micro- and nanodevices requires a significant amount of knowledge of fluid flow and mass transfer (biofluids are multicomponent mixtures) and often heat transfer, electrokinetics, electrochemistry, and molecular biology. To efficiently manufacture laboratories on a microchip, the analysis and computation of flows on a length scale approaching molecular dimensions, the nanoscale, are required.
The common thread is micro- and nanofluidics. Thus micro- and nanofluidics play the role of unifying the fields of fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, electrostatics and electrodynamics, electrochemistry, and molecular biology. In particular, nanofluidics opens the door to uncovering the structure and conformation of biomaterials, such as proteins, through molecular simulation.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Essentials of Micro- and NanofluidicsWith Applications to the Biological and Chemical Sciences, pp. 1 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012