ABSTRACT
Microfluidics generally refers to the science and technology of manipulating minute amounts of fluids with volumes ranging from microliters (1 μL = 1 mm3) to picoliters (1 pL = 10 μm3). The first liquid microfluidic devices emerged in the 1970s. A microfluidic nozzle, used for ink jet printing, was one of the first fluidic applications that took advantage of silicon micromachining (Bassous et al. 1977). The first nozzles were simply through-wafer anisotropically wet etched holes. Since their initial release, ink jet nozzles have developed substantially and they still are probably the most widespread and most successfully commercialized miniaturized fluidic devices.
