Work's Desciption:

Microfluidics concerns fluidic application with characteristic dimensions bellow 1mm. With strong influence of surface and interface effects, microfluidics opens the door to novel and interesting perspectives, enabling the automation of operations and a repeatable and concise sample handling. Recent developments have contributed to the widespread popularization of these technics to a wider public and ranges of applications, such as flow chemistry. Nonetheless, the area is still not mature enough that clear standards exist for fabrication techniques, materials, connections and measurements.

In the context of the micro Nuclear Magnetic Resonance team of the Institute of Microstructure Technology (IMT), you will investigate the existing standards and methods available in the IMT and in the literature. Next, you will develop and optimize these methods to build benchmark microfluidics chips. These chips in turn will be tested through different orthogonal methods and the results compared with analytical and simulation predictions.

Of particular interest are the measurement carried out using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). NMR is the measurement of the evolution of an nuclear spin system under a controlled radiofrequency perturbation. This method allows for a very deep insight into the behavior of the flow without the need of tracers or modifications to the flow and with negligible bias, orders of magnitude below that of current competing methods. However, the use of NMR to characterize microfluidic flows adds new and interesting constrains and challenges.

Given the high degree of interdisciplinarity of this thesis, candidates lacking knowledge in one of the mentioned areas, but with a good background on the others, will be tutored and instructed in the needed topics. It is also possible to join the team at IMT before the master thesis as a student scientific aid (HiWi), to gain familiarity with the microfluidic and MRI hardware, software and manufacturing techniques available in situ. The exact focus of the thesis can be determined upon discussion.

Personal qualifications:

Knowledge and/or experience on:

• Microfluidics
• Micro manufacturing
• Mechanical design
• CFD simulation

Notions of:

• Magnetic resonance imaging
• Micro technology
• Sensor and actuator theory
• Data processing
• Programming (Matlab, Python or similar)

Contract's Duration:  6 Months     Entry Date: Flexible

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