Transport and deposition of colloidal particles in microchannel flow

Abstract

The emergence of Lab-on-a-Chip technologies has instilled an ever-growing interest in the design and analysis of microfluidic systems. During biochemical analyses involving microfluidic devices, particle deposition (surface fouling) can sometimes cause hindrance to the optical detection of the test particles. Also, when the particles and channels are of comparable size, the boundary effects on particle motion become significant. Even though many previous studies have been devoted to understanding particle deposition from pressure driven flows, limited efforts seem to have appeared in the modeling of transport, interaction and deposition of colloidal particles from electrokinetic flows. Hence, this dissertation is in pursuit to investigate the transport and deposition of colloidal particles from pressure driven and electrokinetic microfluidic flows, both theoretically and experimentally, with the objective of establishing the fundamental understanding of particle behavior in these flows, which could serve as useful input to the design and operation of microfluidic devices.