Microfluidics

In the past years, micro fluidic systems experienced a rapid development. Technological advancements in the manufacturing processes of micro fluidic components have opened new ways for a broad variety of technical applications. Especially chemical and biochemical analysis and medical diagnostics do strongly benefit from small system volumes and substantially faster analysis times enabled by microfluidic technologies since often only tiny sample amounts are available for analysis. Recently microfluidic systems also became interesting for chemical production processes In particular the possibility to precisely define and control the physical boundary conditions inside micro channels with a huge surface to volume ratio, leads to more efficient production processes with less by-products.

 

Due to the strongly increasing interest in micro fluidic devices, there is a growing demand for new diagnostic tools for the analysis of flow structures, mixture formation and reaction behavior directly inside the micro channels. In particular non-intrusive measurement techniques which do not influence the flow and reaction processes in the channels are badly needed.