ABSTRACT
Microfluidics is the field that studies and exploits the behavior of “uids conned to small volumes, such as microchannels, droplets, jets, thin water lms, and so on. A good de- nition of “small” is one that has at least one dimension less than 1 mm. At this scale, most “uids behave in nonintuitive ways because capillary forces and viscous forces that are usually negligible on a larger scale become the predominant forces. If the “uid volume under study has a dimension of less than 1 μm, it generally belongs to the realm of nano“uidics (in which continuum mechanics do not apply) and is outside the scope of this textbook.
