Related papers: Thermocapillary-driven fluid flow within microchan…

A mesoscopic or coarse-grained approach is presented to study thermo-capillary induced flows. An order parameter representation of a two-phase binary fluid is used in which the interfacial region separating the phases naturally occupies a…

We investigate the radial thermocapillary flow driven by a laser-heated microbead in partial wetting at the water-air interface. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of the convective flow patterns surrounding the hot sphere as the…

In molecular dynamics simulations, nanochannel flows are usually driven by a constant force, that aims to represent a pressure difference between inlet and outlet, and periodic boundary conditions are applied in the streamwise direction…

Microchannel reactors are critical in biological plus energy-related applications and require meticulous design of hundreds-to-thousands of fluid flow channels. Such systems commonly comprise intricate space-filling microstructures to…

Recent microfluidic experiments have explored the precise positioning of micron-sized particles in liquid environments via laser-induced thermoviscous flow. From micro-robotics to biology at the subcellular scale, this versatile technique…

We develop a general methodology for the inclusion of variable surface tension into a Volume-of-Fluid based Navier-Stokes solver. This new numerical model provides a robust and accurate method for computing the surface gradients directly by…

Capillary-driven transport offers a simple, self-sustained alternative to externally pumped microfluidic systems, yet achieving precise control of such flows remains challenging. We experimentally and theoretically investigate capillary…

Photoresponsive surfactants provide a unique microfluidic driving mechanism. Since their molecular shapes change under illumination and thereby affect surface tension of fluid interfaces, Marangoni flow along the interface occurs. To…

Surface-driven flows are ubiquitous in nature, from subcellular cytoplasmic streaming to organ-scale ciliary arrays. Here, we model how confined geometries can be used to engineer complex hydrodynamic patterns driven by activity prescribed…

In a well-dispersed nanofluid with strong cluster-fluid attraction, thermal conduction paths can arise through percolating amorphous-like interfacial structures. This results in a thermal conductivity enhancement beyond the Maxwell limit of…

The challenge of inducing and controlling localized fluid flows for generic force actuation and for achieving efficient mass transport in microfluidics is key to the development of next generation miniaturized systems for chemistry and life…

The development of microfluidic devices is still hindered by the lack of robust fundamental building blocks that constitute any fluidic system. An attractive approach is optical actuation because light field interaction is contactless and…

Thin viscous liquid films driven by capillarity are well described in the lubrication theory through the thin film equation. In this article, we present an analytical solution of this equation for a particular initial profile: a stepped…

A new two-layer model has been proposed to study microscale heat transfer associated with a developing flow boundary layer. As an example, a cold, microscale film of liquid impinging on an isothermal hot, horizontal surface has been…

Fast and programmable transport of liquid droplets on a solid substrate is desirable in microfluidic, thermal, biomedical, and energy devices. Past research has focused on designing substrates with asymmetric structures or gradient…

Thermal gradients lead to macroscopic fluid motion if a confining surface is present along the gradient. This fundamental nonequilibrium effect, known as thermo-osmosis, is held responsible for particle thermophoresis in colloidal…

Bringing the interfaces of two miscible fluids into contact naturally generates strong gradients in surface tension. Here we investigate such a Marangoni-driven flow by continuously supplying isopropyl alcohol (IPA) on a film of water,…

Arrays of H-shape microfluidic channels connecting two different fluidic reservoirs have been built with silicon/SU8 microfabrication technologies utilized in production of thermal inkjet printheads. The fluids are delivered to the channels…

The thermal expansion of a fluid combined with a temperature-dependent viscosity introduces nonlinearities in the Navier-Stokes equations unrelated to the convective momentum current. The couplings generate the possibility for net fluid…

Thermo-osmotic flows - flows generated in micro and nanofluidic systems by thermal gradients - could provide an alternative approach to harvest waste heat. However, such use would require massive thermo-osmotic flows, which are up to now…