UE Microfluidics

Goal: Microfluidics studies the transport of liquids at the scale of some micrometer to the hundred of micrometer, such as the flow of red blood cells in a blood vessel, the transport of polymer chains in a porous medium, or the locomotion of micro-organisms. Nanofluidics studies the flow of liquids at the colloidal scale, that is at distance of the nanometer to the micrometer from a surface. This course introduces the concepts of low Reynolds number flows and surface-driven flows and describes the main properties of flows and transport at the sub-millimeter scale.

Content:
- Simple deformations, definition of viscosity
- Lubrication flows ; applications
- Stokes equations ; general properties of low Reynolds number flows
- Diffusion and mixing ; hydrodynamic dispersion ; Peclet number
- Capillary flows ; moving contact lines
- Surface driven flows and coupled transport: Marangoni flows ; electro-osmosis ; Helmoltz-Shmolukovski velocity
Exercise session:
Viscous flow around a sphere ; Oseen tensor ; notions on locomotion at low Re

Bibliography:
Guyon, Hulin, Petit "Physical Hydrodynamics"
de Gennes, Brochard, Quéré "Bubbles, drops, pearls and waves"
Tabeling "Introduction to microfluidics"