Correspondence Between Electronics and Fluids in MEMS: Designing Microfluidic Systems Using Electronics

It is well known that the classical laws of circuits have equivalents in fluid movement if certain conditions are met. Usually, equivalence with linear circuits requires laminar flow, which is a typical condition in a microelectromechanical system (MEMS). However, fluidic devices, which are nonlinear in nature, can also have an electronic counterpart, and the tools and procedures used in electronic design can be applied to microfluidic systems. A complete description of the electronic-fluidic correspondence, focused especially on MEMS, can increase the number of ways to design microfluidic networks and open new ways of operating them. The modeling of complex microfluidic networks, in particular, applications, demonstrate the usefulness of the analogy.