Measurements of a microchannel flow using micro-PIV

A micro-PIV(particle image velocimetry) measurement has been conducted to investigate flow fields in such microfluidic devices as microchannels and micronozzle. The present study employs a state-of-art micro-PIV system which consists of epi-fluorescence microscope, 620nm diameter fluorescent seed particles and an 8-bit megapixel CCD camera. Velocity vector fields with a resolution of $6.8\;\times\;6.8{\mu}m$ has been obtained, and the attention has been paid on the effect of varying measurement conditions of particle diameter and particle concentration on the resulting PIV results. In this study, the microfluidic elements were fabricated on plastic chips by means of MEMS processes and a subsequent molding process. Flow fields in a variety of microchannels as well as micronozzle have been investigated.