Submission deadline: August 31st 2024

Please contact floweditorial@cambridge.org with enquiries.

The study of flow and transport at the micro- and nano-scales enhances our understanding of underlying natural phenomena and enables technological advances. These advances offer new opportunities to improve human productivity and quality of life. This interdisciplinary field involves fluid physics, chemistry, microelectronics, advanced fabrication methods, new materials, biology, and biomedical engineering, making it one of the most active areas of interdisciplinary research. The field faces immense challenges including understanding and controlling complex and reacting flows. The associated simulation and modelling will also require more precise and efficient computational approaches. As demand for device performance increases, there is also a need for more efficient experimental techniques. This issue will provide a platform for researchers to present state-of-the-art advances in the field of flow and transport in micro- and nano-scale devices.

Our primary objective is to emphasize the crucial link between fundamental research and practical implementation in this rapidly evolving field. This issue aims to promote and exemplify the practical utilization of flow and transport for concrete applications, and its papers will contribute across fluid physics, chemistry, biology and biomedical engineering, and measurement technology. All accepted manuscripts will be published as soon as they are ready and in a continuous manner. We welcome a range of article types (Research articles, Flow Rapids, Case Studies, Critical Reviews, and Tutorial Reviews)

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• Biofluid and biomedical devices at the micro- and nano-scale
  • Molecular and cellular sorting/separation, nucleic acids analysis, DNA molecular control, sequencing, and enzymatic amplification and detection.
  • Biomaterial stress and cycle analysis
  • Flow regulation and drug delivery
  • Cell and organism motility and mechanobiology
  • Biosensors for humans, animals, and plants
• Novel measurement and characterization technologies at the micro and nano-scale
  • Measurement of transport fields including velocity, species concentration, temperature, and pressure
  • Quantification of thermophysical parameters including diffusion coefficients, reaction rates, and/or rheological properties of complex fluids
• Heat, energy, and water topics at the micro and nano-scale
  • Cooling and heat dissipation/transfer technologies
  • Control and enhancement of phase change including boiling and condensation
  • Supercritical CO₂ applications in microfluidic systems
  • Water desalination using microfluidics (e.g., electrochemical and/or membrane systems)
• Droplet based microfluidics and nanofluidics
  • Droplet generation, merging, splitting, and sorting
  • Microfluidic droplet networks
  • Applications of droplet systems to chemical and biological assays
• Multiphysics methods of flow and species control at micro- or nano-scales
  • Electrokinetic flow control, species separation, and species focusing and trapping
  • Optofluidic transport and devices
  • Acoustofluidic flow control, mixing, and separation
  • Magnetohydrodynamic fluid actuation
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) for microfluidic design and control

Guest Editors

Name: Cunjing Lv (Flow Associate Editor)
Title: Associate Professor
Affiliation: Department of Engineering Mechanics, Tsinghua University, China
Bios: Cunjing Lv obtained his PhD degree in engineering mechanics at Tsinghua University in 2012. Following that, from 2013 to 2014, he conducted postdoctoral research at ESPCI in Paris. He then served as a postdoctoral researcher and an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Center of Smart Interfaces in the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany, from 2015 to 2017. In December 2017, he joined Tsinghua University. His research primarily focuses on hydrodynamics at fluid interfaces, specifically in the areas of microfluidics, wetting and non-wetting phenomena, and fluid manipulation technologies in nano/micro systems. He is particularly dedicated to exploring the fundamental problems related to the stability issues of bio-inspired superhydrophobic materials and applying them in real-world applications.

Name: Steffen Hardt
Title: Professor
Affiliation: Institute for Nano- and Microfluidics, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany
Bio: Steffen Hardt obtained his Ph.D. in theoretical physics at the Universität Giessen in 1996. After that he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Microsystems and Microengineering, where he shifted his focus to microtechnology and later especially to microfluidics. He is currently full professor and head of the Institute for Nano- and Microfluidics at the TU Darmstadt. He is especially interested in exploring the fundamental nature of nano- and microfluidic transport phenomena, with the intention to pave the way for novel types of applications. His current research interests include electrokinetics, multiphase microflows, wetting phenomena, optofluidics, and interactions of particles and molecules with fluid interfaces.

Name: Charles Baroud
Title: Professor
Affiliation: Laboratoire d'Hydrodynamique (LadHyX), Ecole Polytechnique, France
Bio: Charles Baroud obtained his Ph.D. in the University of Texas at Austin in mechanical engineering and physics 2001. After that he moved to France for a postdoctoral fellowship in the Statistical Physics Lab at École Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 2002, he joined École Polytechnique where he founded the microfluidics research activity and received an ERC Starting Grant in 2011, followed by two ERC Proof of Concept Grants. Since 2017, he has been heading a joint group of Institut Pasteur and École Polytechnique on Physical microfluidics and Bioengineering. Starting from a fundamental physical approach to microfluidics, his research group has developed a suite of technologies for droplet generation and manipulation, in addition to a fundamental understanding of multiphase fluid flows in complex geometries. His recent work has concentrated on using these tools towards both fundamental studies and applications in the physical and biological sciences.