Recent Advances in Micro-Particle Image Velocimetry

Microfluidic devices are becoming increasingly common and are seen in applications ranging from biology to nanotechnology and manufacturing. Flow behavior in these small domains can often be counterintuitive because of the low Reynolds number or the relative importance of surface forces. Micro-particle image velocimetry (μPIV) is a quantitative method that can be used to characterize the performance of such microfluidic systems with spatial resolutions better than one micron. Illustrating the impact of this measurement technique, more than 100 journal articles are published per year that feature μPIV velocity measurements. This article discusses the fundamentals of the technique, its theoretical background, and several applications.