Sharif Digital Repository

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,... 

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... 

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... 

In this project a centrifugal, microfluidic platform to the end of separation and studying circulating tumor cells is designed, modelled and analyzed. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are specific types of cancer cells which leave the original tumor and enter the blood stream. For the separation of CTCs, a novel anti-body separation technic has been used which targets the specific MCF7 CTCs using their corresponding Ep-CAM antibody. First the Ep-CAM antibody is coated on magnetic nanoparticles through a chemical bonding process. Afterwards the CTCs are exposed to their antibodies, through which they will bind together and form CTCs with magnetic characteristics. Finally through exerting an... 

Nowadays environmental issues are of great importance and one of the most paramount issues is the quality of water, because clean water is vital to our existence. Besides different methods for water purification, water quality testing is a useful and needful tool. Traditional methods for determination of water quality parameters are mainly expensive, time consuming and require highly trained staff. In this study, we have described a centrifugal microfluidic platform (Lab- on – a- CD) for simultaneous determination of different physical and chemical parameters including Nitrite, Free Chlorine and pH. All of the processes from sample injection to detection are integrated on this low-cost and... 

The main purpose of this project is synthesis of the silica nano-sheets by means of microfluidic techniques. Continuous process, precise control of reaction condition, and higher production rate can be considered as main pros of silica nano-sheets synthesized by microfluidic platforms. General method can be explain as follow: first two oleic and aqueous phase are injected to the microfluidic system, then oleic phase breaks down in aqueous phase drop-wisely and by performing sol-gel reaction on the oil-water interface a silica crust is made on oil droplets. Eventually, oil droplets are left the system and broken down and silica nano-sheets are made. FESEM and microscopic images of... 

Particle separation has a variety of applications in biology, chemistry and industry. Among them, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) separation has drawn significant attention to itself due to its high impact on both cancer diagnosis and therapeutics. In recent years, there has been growing interest in using inertial microfluidics to separate micro/nano particles based on their sizes. This technique offers label-free, high throughput, and efficient separation and can be easily fabricated. However, further improvements are needed for potential clinical applications. In this study, a novel inertial separation technique using spiral microchannel with stair-like cross section is introduced. The... 

A new microfluidic device is introduced for sorting the particles based on the hydrodynamic resistance induced in a microchannel which is not needed for additional detection or sorting modules. Hydrodynamic resistance affects physical properties, such as size and deformability of the particle. This device could apply application in cell sorting for remedies, diagnostics, and industrial applications. The device design is performed using an equivalent resistance model, and also numerical simulations are performed. For validation of the results, they are compared with experimental results. Moreover, we will discuss threshold particle size and will introduce a way to approximate it to ... 

Design, simulation, optimization and manufacturing of an enzyme-based microfluidic biosensor has been carried out during this research to measure histamine concentration in a sample. The designed biosensor is composed of a micro-bioreactor to degrade histamine and yield hydrogen peroxide, and a chemical reactor to measure the amount of hydrogen peroxide, using chemiluminescence methods. The geometry of the bioreactor and chemical reactor is developed through comparison and optimization of several different geometries. In theory, the designed sensor can determine histamine concentration in a range of 10M to 1mM under one minute, with a maximum error of 5%. Designed biosensor is built using... 

Continuous separation processes in microfluidic devices experienced a steep rise in attention during the last two decades. Among the different separation processes, liquid-liquid extraction especially benefits from the short molecular diffusion distance and large specific interfacial area, as these are advantageous for effective mass transport. In the present study, glass-based microfluidic devices have been fabricated utilizing laser ablation and wet chemical etching methods then experiments and numerical simulation were carried out to investigate hydrodynamic behavior of fluid flow in Y-junction microfluidic. In order to achieve phase separation at the end of the microchannel, a phase... 

The advent of microfluidics as suitable environments for culturing cells is associated with some challenges such as shear stresses applied on the cells. In fact, hepatocytes lose their function as exposed to high shear stresses similar to other cell types. Moreover, among all factors needed for cell viability, feeding hepatocytes with adequate oxygen is of great importance due to their high demand for oxygen compared the other cells. In this thesis, different types of cultures including 2D and 3D has been used in order that shear stresses would be in allowed range and provision of hepatocytes with sufficient oxygen concentrations has been ensured as well. In addition to supplying hepatocytes... 

Separating cells from a mixed sample is a required task in biotechnology and modern medicine, for example to isolate CTC’s that are of interest for doing therapy and diagnosing or doing research. A minute percentage of target cells must be separated from a large amount of unwanted cells. These target cells like CTC’s could be as rare as 1 target cell per millions of unwanted background cells. Hence Microfluidic cell sorting schemes based upon fluorescent labelling, electrophoresis, dielectrophoresis and magnetophoresis have been devised. Microfluidic magnetically-activated cell sorting (MACS) does not need any optical instrument or current source and electrode. By using an electromagnet or... 

The purpose of this research is the synthesis of nanoparticles using micro fluid glass.The microfluidic glassy building is studied. Glass microfluidic microchannels making hydrophobic the continuing experiments carried out so that the water droplets in the organic phase and at the end of nanoparticles should be synthesized. Tests hydrophobic microchannels and water droplets in the organic phase was formed. In order to ensure an escape water contact angle and FTIR micro-channel test is taken and to avoid the droplets merged with each of surfactant SDS was used. In the end, DLS and FESEM nanoparticles synthesized using the tests have been evaluated and the concentrations of reactants and flow... 

The microfluidic fuel cell or laminar flow-based fuel cell is a membrane-less fuel cell which typically consists of two electrodes mounted within a T- or Y-shaped microchannel. Aqueous fuel and oxidant are introduced from the two inlets of the channel and flow together side-by-side toward the end of the channel. The Reynolds number in the microchannel is low, and hence viscous forces are dominant over the inertial forces. This causes the anolyte and catholyte form a co-laminar flow inside the microchannel which is required to maintain the separation of the fuel and oxidant and limit the reactions to the appropriate electrodes. In this work, a comprehensive numerical model of the microfluidic... 

Nowadays, separation and filtration of particles has many industrial applications in biology and medicine. In this thesis, passive microfluidics are designed and simulated which are able to separate and filter particles. Although particles aer generally expected to follow laminar flow streamlines in the absence of external forces, inertial forxes van cause particles to migrate across mictochannels in an accurate and predictable manner. The effect of these forces is invedtigated, and by using previous research, a model is developed to predict these forces. First design is a microchannel with Archimedean spiral which utilizes both inertial forces and Dean flow to separate particles in the... 

Nowadays cell-based microfluidic devices have many applications. One of the applications is disease diagnosis according to number of cells. Cell counting has different methods, such as optical cell counting, flow cytometry, hemocytometry, coulter counters,and so on. One of the methods of cells counting is based on measurement of changes in impedance or conductivity of surrounding medium because ions are released from surface-immobilized cells inside a micr of luidic channel.The method of cell lysate impedance spectroscopy is sensitive enough and it was offered for detecting and enumerating CD4+ cells in HIV patients. In this study,... 

In many microfluidic devices, focusing particles into a narrow stream is usually an essential step prior to counting, detecting, and sorting them. By installation of microfluidic laboratory functions on a rotating disk, new devices called Lab-on-a-disks, which have plenty of advantages in comparison to ordinary Lab-on-a-chips, shape. In this study, to the best of our knowledge for the first time, a Lab-on-a-disk device is designed and fabricated in order to focus particles prior to detecting them by a conventional CD-ROM as a strong optical system. Hydrophoresis method, using slanted obstacles to induce transverse pressure gradients, is utilized to focus particles. In this regard, the... 

Improving efficiency of heat exchangers has always been an important concern for the industry. Pulsating heat pipes are novel and efficient technology in the field of heat transfer. Pulsating heat pipes are widely used in solar water heaters, solar desalination systems, air conditioning systems, cooling of electronical boards, etc. these applications explain the necessity of performing this study in our country. In this research, thermal performance of open loop pulsating heat pipes using two operating fluids (ferrofluid with surfactant and aluminum microfluid) is experimentally investigated. Start-up and steady thermal performance of pulsating heat pipes charged with these two operating... 

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... 

A Lab-On-a-Chip (LOC) is a device which can integrate one or many laboratory functions on a small chip with millimeters to few square centimeters in size. LOC is a subset of MEMS devices and known as “Micro Total Analysis Systems” (µTAS) as well. LOC technology is closely related to microfluidics which primarily describes the physics, manipulation and study of minute amount of fluids.In this research we tried to simulate the performance of a microfluidic device for counting blood cells to find main factors of it for design and manufacturing. This research has two main sections, hydrodynamics of fluid inside the microchannels and finding electrical performance of designed Coulter counter for...