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PIV measurements of flow within plugs in a microchannel

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Abstract

The use of two-phase flow in lab-on-chip devices, where chemical and biological reagents are enclosed within plugs separated from each other by an immiscible fluid, offers significant advantages for the development of devices with high throughput of individual heterogeneous samples. Lab-on-chip devices designed to perform the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) are a prime example of such developments. The internal circulation within the plugs used to transport the reagents affects the efficiency of the chemical reaction within the plug, due to the degree of mixing induced on the reagents by the flow regime. It has been hypothesised in the literature that all plug flows produce internal circulation. This work demonstrates experimentally that this is false. The particle image velocimetry (PIV) technique offers a powerful non-intrusive tool to study such flow fields. This paper presents micro-PIV experiments carried out to study the internal circulation of aqueous plugs in two phase flow within 762 μm internal diameter FEP Teflon tubing with FC-40 as the segmenting fluid. Experiments have been performed and the results are presented for plugs ranging in length from 1 to 13 mm with a bulk mean flow velocity ranging from 0.3 to 50 mm/s. The results demonstrate for the first time that circulation within the plugs is not always present and requires fluidic design considerations to ensure their generation.

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Abbreviations

m :

magnification

NA:

numerical aperture

R :

radius of tubing (mm)

V :

velocity (mm/s)

V avg :

average velocity of plug (mm/s)

V max :

maximum velocity (mm/s)

V mean bulk :

bulk mean velocity (mm/s)

X :

distance (mm)

Y :

distance (mm)

d e :

effective diameter of particle on CCD (μm)

d p :

diameter of particle (μm)

d s :

point spread function (μm)

n :

refractive index

r :

radial position (mm)

δx :

measurement uncertainty (μm)

δz m :

measurement depth (μm)

θ:

light collection angle (rad)

λ0 :

wavelength of light in a vacuum (nm)

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Acknowledgments

The authors of this paper would like to acknowledge the support of Enterprise Ireland through the Basic Research Grant scheme.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Stokes Research Institute, Department of Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering, University of Limerick, Castletroy, Co. Limerick, Ireland

    Colin King, Edmond Walsh & Ronan Grimes

Authors
  1. Colin King
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  2. Edmond Walsh
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  3. Ronan Grimes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Colin King.

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King, C., Walsh, E. & Grimes, R. PIV measurements of flow within plugs in a microchannel. Microfluid Nanofluid 3, 463–472 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-006-0139-y

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