Performance Characterization of Microfluidic Peristaltic Pump Using Micro-Particle Image Velocimetry (Î1⁄4PIV)

Lab-on-Chip (LoC) devices are on the verge of revolutionizing clinical diagnostics and point-of-care applications. These devices can integrate miniaturized laboratory functions (such as separation and analysis of components of a mixture) on a single chip using extremely small fluid volumes. For example, in the health care industry, an electrophoresis chip is fabricated for monitoring lithium in the blood of manic depressive patients, and a similar chip platform can also be used to measure sodium in urine, which is relevant for kidney patients. Microperistaltic pumps, as a LoC component, have received a fairly high attention, because they are responsible for routing the fluids in a complex network of microchannels. Microperistaltic pumps have many advantages—they are inexpensive to fabricate, simple in design, and robust in many applications, and they have provided an efficient means for sanitary fluid transport— and thus they are exploited in industrial peristaltic pumping.