Abstract
In this paper, we have (1) built a micro flow network that mimics micro vessels and visualized the flow inside utilizing both experimental and CFD approaches, (2) developed a model, which considering both the inertial forces caused by flow convection and the diffusion resulting from Brownian motion, to evaluate the entrapment probability of nanoparticles with various particle sizes and channel geometries from micro flow field into nanochannels. In the experimental results, the spatial resolution of about 2 μm is employed to resolve the near-wall flow field with 50% interrogation spot overlapping by using μPIV. The most significant deviation is about 5% between the experimental and simulation results. Finally we used Stokes-Einstein equation to estimate the entrapment probability of nanoparticles with various particle sizes and channel geometries. Copyright © 2009 by ASME.