Micro squeeze flow rheometer for high frequency analysis of nano-litre volumes of viscoelastic fluid

Cheneler, David; Bowen, James; Ward, Michael C. L. and Adams, Michael J. (2010). Micro squeeze flow rheometer for high frequency analysis of nano-litre volumes of viscoelastic fluid. In: 36th International Conference on Micro & Nano Engineering, 19-22 Sep 2010, Genoa, Italy.

URL: https://www.academia.edu/9823597/Micro_squeeze_flo...

Abstract

In this paper, the design, fabrication and experimental analysis of a piezoelectrically actuated micro squeeze flow rheometer is presented. Being only 30 × 30 × 0.5 mm in size, the micro rheometer is sensitive to very small volumes of the order of 1–10 nL of liquid and light The design, fabrication and experimental analysis of a piezoelectrically actuated micro squeeze flow rheometer (MSFR) is presented. The design improves upon existing technology such as the Micro Fourier Rheometer and others by having the advantage of being very small in size in comparison. This makes it sensitive to very small (nano-litre) volumes of liquid and light enough to operate at frequencies an order of magnitude higher than normally attainable with conventional cone and plate rheometry. Its size and the method of fabrication used also makes it very cheap to produce allowing it to be operated in parallel with a large array of similar devices. This will greatly facilitate high throughput screening of large numbers of small volumes of fluid, which is highly desirable within the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. It also makes it possible to integrate the rheometer into lab-on-a-chip devices or use it for BioMEMS applications.

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