Abstract
Even though microfluidic devices are slowly becoming commercial reality (e.g. Inkjet printers), the challenges in the design of microfluidic devices remain since not all aspects of fluid flow in microchannels have been fully understood yet. This paper presents an extensive review of studies on flow physics for both pressure-driven and electrokinetic flows in microchannels. The primary goal of the present paper is to provide a wide overview of findings on underlying principles of microflow physics. The issues discussed include the effect of pressure drop and friction measurements; mixing and flow control methods for microfluidic systems; and joule heating and viscous dissipation effects in microchannel flows. No agreement has been found among studies focusing on the characterization of friction factor/pressure drop for microflow systems. Further investigation requires understanding how entrance effects differ in the case of microflows when compared to macro scale flow. There is a clear need to investigate characteristics of non-Newtonian fluid flow in microchannels.
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