Author Description

Both experimental and numerical studies about the transport phenomena in microfluidic devices are presented in this thesis. The transport phenomena of interest are pressure driven flow and electroosmotic driven flow with a Reynolds number on the order of unit, and the associated mass transport phenomena. The studied microfluidic devices include fused silicon capillaries, in-house made glass microchannels and a glass chip with a crossing-linked microchannel etched into its surface. The hydraulic diameter ranges from 20 mum to 200 mum.The on-chip sample injection processes are studied both experimentally and numerically. Fluorescent dyes are employed here as the sample and the sample injection (loading and dispensing) processes on a microfluidic chip are visualized using an in-house developed laser visualization system and techniques. The experimentally measured sample injection process is compared with the numerical simulation results. Reasonable agreements were found between the model predictions and experimental measurements. The model is further developed in order to improve the simulation accuracy and save significant computation time as compared with the previous model.A general model capable of simulating general on-chip injection processes is finally developed to make the numerical analysis tools complete. This general model considers the electrical conductivity difference present at microfluidic applications, which is not considered normally due to its complexity.The electroosomotic flow is commonly applied in microfluidic devices as a pump, therefore, the flow rate determination is of particular interest. An experimental setup and corresponding data acquisition system are developed to measure electroosmotic flow rate by employing solution displacement process and current monitoring technique. A theoretical model is developed to improve the accuracy of this technique. A numerical model is developed to simulate this displacing process and to obtain flow rate. Good agreements between numerical simulations and experimental measurements verified the developed model.The electrokinetic transport phenomena of pressure driven flow in microchannels are studied based on a simultaneous solution to the developed pressure driven flow model. It is found that the flow characteristics of microchannels differ significantly from that in macrosized devices showing high viscous effects. The numerical results are compared with the experimental measurements and good agreement verified the developed model.