Micro- PIV Measurements of Microchannel Flows and Related Problems

마이크로 채널 내부 유동의 Micro-PIV측정과 제반 문제점

Most microfluidic devices such as heat sinks for cooling micro-chips, DNA chip, Lab-On-Chip, and micro pumps etc. have microchannels of various size. Therefore, the design of practical microfluidics demands detail information on flow structure inside the microchannels. However, detail velocity field measurements are rare and difficult to carry out. In addition, as the microfluidics expands, accurate understanding of microscale transport phenomena becomes very important. In this research, micro-PIV system was employed to measure the velocity fields of flow inside a micro-channel. We carried out PIV measurements for several microchannels with varying channels width, inlet and outlet shape, filters, CCD camera and ICCD camera, etc. For effective composition of micro-PIV system, first of all, it is essential to understand optics related with micro-imaging of particles and the particle dynamics encountered in micro-scale channel flows. In addition, it is necessary to find the optimal condition for given experimental environment and? micro-scale flow to be investigated. The problems encountered in measuring velocity field of micro-channel flows are discussed in this paper.