A fine set of teeth

This paper presents travelling-wave micropump. A travelling-wave micropump that increases transport efficiency by 35% has been demonstrated by researchers in China. A team from Nankai University have replaced the traditional straight microchannel with a sawtooth-shaped microchannel that acts as a cascaded diffuser element. This micropump design has the potential to be fabricated on biosensor chips. Microfluidic chips, or lab-on-a-chip, have undergone rapid development since the 1990s. By handling extremely small volumes of fluid (of the order of several microlitres) they recreate conventional laboratory methods for chemical and biochemical analysis, and there are many potential applications in biochemistry, medicine and environmental science.