Sharif Digital Repository

Nowadays, microfluidic flow appears in many applications, such as medical, biological, and chemical industries. Where as, micromixing, which deals with mixing of microfluidic flow in micro channels, appears to be an important issue to many researchers. In such systems, molecular diffusion plays an important role. On the other hand, lattice Boltzmann method is a relatively new simulation technique for complex fluid systems and has become interesting to many researchers in computational physics. In this study, computational simulation of such mixing process, using LBM is the main objective. Different obstacle layouts inside a microchannel have been investigated. Chaotic advection and jet... 

Dissemination of an analyte under the laminar flows plays a major role in measuring and assessment of biological fluids such as sample preparation in the context of microfluidic systems. Due to the development of manufacturing technology in the Lab-on-a-chip devices, the production of rectangular microchannels with finite aspect ratios and micron and submicron sizes has been provided by which the effect of electrokinetic phenomena on concentration distribution will be magnified in these systems. On the other hand, these biofluids are viscoelastic and show extraordinary flow behaviors, not existing in Newtonian fluids and adopting appropriate constitutive equations these exotic flow behaviors... 

Diabetes is one of the most catastrophic diseases in the world. There will be an end to patients’ problems if scientists can invent the artificial pancreas, but there is no implantable sensing core available. All of the sensors used for measuring blood glucose level were based on an electrochemical sensor which will generate a glucose level dependent electric current. The chemical structure of that sensor will deny its usability for in vivo applications. By exploring several biological and electrical literatures we introduced a fully electrical method for sensing the blood glucose level by impedance measurement. In this thesis we introduced a new method for sensing the blood glucose... 

Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are cancer cells which shed from the primary tumor, enter circulation and spread cancer all over the body. CTCs give valuable information about cancer and can help diagnosis and prognosis. Hence separating and isolating CTCs from blood is a necessity for cancer therapeutics. CTCs are separated from blood cells by their different physical or biochemical properties. Many groups have attempted different methods for separation of CTCs. Inertial microfluidics is one of the newest approaches in CTC separation technologies which separates CTCs based on their size. Current inertial microfluidic systems containing straight, spiral, serpentine and contraction expansion... 

The first attempt of this study was theoretical and experimental investigations of bioelectrochemical processes in microfluidic systems. Besides, novel applications of this technology as a powerful platform for maximum usage of bioenergy were introduced. The feasibility of a microfluidic microbial fuel cell (MFC) as an efficient power generator for production of bioelectricity for implantable medical devices (IMDs) and fabrication of microfluidic microbial electrolysis cell (MEC) for hydrogen medicine were investigated. For the glucose-fed microfluidic MFC, the maximum power density of 5.2 µW cm-2 obtained in this study is 13 fold greater than the power density reported previously for... 

All the biological diagnostic devices that are introduced to the consumers, must meet WHO criteria. Some of these criteria include being affordable, sensitive and deliverable to the user. In the last twenty years, there have been lots of efforts to use microfluidic devices for biological assay. Due to their expensive price and requirement of complex equipment for their fabrication, polymer-based microfluidic devices have not been able to be used in developing countries. It is to be hoped that introduction of paper for fabrication of microfluidic devices could make microfluidic devices meet WHO criteria. μPADs are divided into well-based and channel-based devices. In the present work, both... 

Diabetes mellitus is a global endemic that is rapidly increasing prevalence in both developing and developed countries. Recently, the American Diabetes Association has recommended the hemoglobin A1c as a possible substitute to fasting blood glucose for diagnosis of diabetes because it is an indicator of long-term glycemic control. Also, centrifugal microfluidics systems have a good potential to be used in the point of care testing systems. In this study, two centrifugal microfluidic discs were designed and manufactured in order to separately measure the hemoglobin and hemoglobin A1c in the whole blood. In the first part of the study, the hemoglobin measurement disc consists of two chambers... 

Recent advances in micro-technology are finding important applications especially in chemical and biological processes. In these applications, mixing has a profound importance. Due to the inherent low Reynold’s number flow in micro systems, diffusion mixing is the dominant mixing mechanism at these scales. This is in contrary to the high Reynold’s number ordinary applications where turbulent mixing plays the major role. There are two major classes of micro-mixers: passive and active. Passive micro-mixers rely on geometric features to enhance mixing. Active micro-mixers on the other hand, use external excitation to promote and control the rate of mixing. In this work, using numerical tools,... 

In this research, the surface of cellulose paper was modified with Hexadecyltrimethoxysilane, Phenyltriethoxysilane, (3-Aminopropyl)triethoxysilane and 3-(2,3-epoxypropoxy)propyltrimethoxysilane via chemical bonding. Afterwards, the prepared papers were placed in the microfluidic device as sorbent in a sandwiched format. A syringe pump was used to drive the sample into the microfluidic channel. In order to investigated the performance of these sorbents, two types of anlaytes including toxins and antidepressant drugs were chosen as target analytes. In the case of toxins, ethion, fenthion, profenfose, diazinon, atrazine and ametryn were studied. among the antidepressant drugs,... 

The accurate assessment of biomarkers likes proteins, hormones or other biomolecules that amount of them changes with state of disease or level of treatment and gives diagnostic information is a difficult duty. In these samples, pathogens exist in small quantity compared to other background molecules. Therefore, appropriate sampling process for concentrating and separating pathogens from the matrix should be developed in order to provide rapid and accurate pathogen detection test. In this thesis design and fabrication of microfluidic biosensors based on the modified nanofibrous membranes were investigated and explained. PES nanofibrous membrane with carboxyl functional groups for covalent... 

Microfluidics is a novel technology that brought a revolution in the field of chemistry and biology. This technology allows precise control and manipulation of fluids and particles in sub-millimeter bio-compatible channels. This makes microfluidics a powerful tool to study and examine bio-particles and bio-processes. One of the most prominent areas in microfluidics is the integration of developed measurement tools and devices of the electrical engineering field, with microfluidic chips. The purpose of this thesis is to measure the electrical impedance spectrum of bio-particles with high precision and in a wide bandwidth. These valuable spectrums are useful in many applications such as... 

The main purposes of this project are simulation, design, and fabrication of a microfluidic system based on dielectrophoresis (DEP) exploiting AC voltages for separation of microparticles. Generally, this project can be divided into two parts. First, the engineering section including design and fabrication of microchip, and second biological samples preparation for investigating the system performance. The main advantages of proposed system are eliminating joule heating, a significant problem in insulating based dielectrophoresis systems, overcoming problems related to metal contamination in biological samples, the main problem of conventional dielectrophoresis platforms, and removing... 

In this thesis, a numerical analysis of micro chamber filling in centrifugal microfluidics is investigated. In the development of micro total analysis systems, it is often necessary to achieve complete and uniform filling of relatively large micro chambers. With centrifugal devices, these large micro chambers must often be orientated perpendicularly to the direction of centrifugal force and are usually bounded by materials with varying surface properties. On the other hand, the mixing characterization of two fluid by centrifugal microfluidic method has been also conducted. The multiphase flow analyses based on Eulerian-Eulerian approach have been conducted and the VOF method was used for ... 

This study presents the experimental investigation of the microfluidic microbial fuel cell – microbial electrolysis cell coupled system as a bioenergy generator to produce biohydrogen without any external power supply. The effect of microbial fuel cells number (to provide the required potential for microbial electrolysis cell), the type of substrate and its concentration were assessed. The maximum produced hydrogen of 25, 33 and 50 ppm were obtained in flow rate of 200 μl h-1 and glucose concentration of 200 mg l-1 in 1, 2 and 3 stack MFCs, respectively. For urea solution, by combination of 1, 2 and 3 stack MFCs in the flow rate of 200 μl h-1 and the concentration of 800 mg l-1, the maximum... 

Most of industrial and laboratory processes are faced with liquid-liquid emulsions particularly aqueous-organic ones in their different product streams which determine the need to perform phase separation due to enviromental problems or need to increase the product purity. In this project, due to presence of a water-hexane two phase flow mixture in the outflow of a microractor that performs Lithium-Bromine exchange reaction, a capillary microchip separator has been designed in order to separate water through capillary channel and hexane through main channel outlet using interfacial forces and wettability effects. To obtain a desired phase separation, the pressure drop through main channel... 

The present study is aimed at the development of a novel approach based on the magnetically improvement of DNA-directed immobilization to prepare a highly efficient sensor for prostate diagnosis. The novelty of this work is in the use of antibody conjugated magnetic nanoparticles via DDI. DNA-modified magnetic nanoparticles are added in solution to capture DNA-conjugated, fluorescently-labeled immunocomplexes formed in solution free of steric constraints. The DDI-based nanoconstructs are then concentrated and immobilized using a magnetic field. Compared to a process in which the immunocomplex directly forms on the sensing surface, the proposed approach provides higher mass transfer and lower... 

The present paper is an attempt to critically measure interfacial tension with microchannels and achieve the quantity of adsorption in the liquid – liquid interfaces and comparing the adsorption of surfactants and nanoparticles surface modificated as well. At this point we need to make emulsion and it is necessary for droplets to be monodispersed due to analyze these droplets in this paper. According to this condition for our droplets microsystems are the best options. As we know surfactants were already known as a stabilizing emulsion agent and in this paper nanoparticles are suggested as suitable alternatives for surfactants which can be absorbed as if they are in the water / oil... 

The development of clean, renewable and alternative sources of fossil fuels has increased in recent years due to various factors such as environmental pollution, reduced fossil fuel resources and increased energy consumption. The application of microbial fuel cells is one of the clean energy production methods using renewable sources such as municipal sewage. The microbial fuel cell converts the chemical energy stored in organic materials into electrical energy and simultaneously purifies the sewage. Increasing current density and power density are the most important challenges for microbial fuel cells. In this study, the two biocatalysts of Shewanella Oneidensis MR1 and Escherichia coli... 

In medical science, preparing a high purity sample of certain kinds of cells plays an important role in studying the characteristics and functionality of cells, detecting in vitro harmful pathogens and helping to find ways of preventing and treating diseases that cause cellular disorders in the human body. The goal of this research is to improve the spiral microchannel with stair-like cross section in order to separate white blood cells from whole blood. First, the efficiency of this method was evaluated numerically, using a developed finite element model. Then, the desired microchannel mold was made using the micromiling method, and we fabricated the chip using soft lithography and pasting... 

Considering the advantages and disadvantages of reported micropumps, we aimed to introduce a novel idea to diminish the disadvantages and promote the advantages of Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) micropumps. This novel idea operates based on a mercury slug rotation in a circular microchannel. This cyclic motion of the mercury slug which is similar to a piston, push the fluid in the microchannel and pump the flow. However, to bring this idea into the practice, it must be integrated with a specific valve. Fluid has not to go through this specific valve. In contrary, mercury slug has to pass across this valve. These two specifications must be considered during the design process of the valve. On the...