14
APPLICATION OF BACTERIAL FLAGELLAR MOTORS IN MICROFLUIDIC SYSTEMS
14.1 INTRODUCTION
In the current era of micro- and nanotechnology, microfluidics occupies an important position both in terms of the fundamental science and practical applications due to the simple fact that the majority of living microorganisms is either surrounded by fluids or requires fluids for survival. Microfluidics, according to the most commonly accepted definition, is the study of “transport phenomena and fluid-based devices at the microscopic length scales” [1]. The primary reason for separating microfluidics from the conventional discipline of fluid mechanics, which has been going strong for well over 100 years, is because the assumptions of continuum and no-slip boundary conditions, two of the major cornerstones in deriving the governing equations for incompressible flows, begin to break down as the characteristic flow scale reaches the micrometer range. In this range, factors such as surface tension and other interfacial phenomena that are more or less omitted in the treatment of macroscale fluid flows become increasingly important due to rising surface-to-volume ratio.
The development of microelectromechanical and the more recent nanoelectromechanical systems (MEMS and NEMS, respectively) fabrication techniques has greatly accelerated the transformation of microfluidics from laboratory-based studies to commercially viable applications. Using these techniques, ...
