Measuring the Flow of Tiny Amounts of Liquid, with Light
Precisely measuring and controlling minuscule flow rates has become critically important in the burgeoning field of microfluidics, which includes the delivery of minute amounts of drugs, the preparation of tiny amounts of liquids, the formation of microdroplets and biotechnology studies that monitor the flow of nutrients to cells. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed an optical system that accurately measures the flow of extraordinarily tiny amounts of liquids — as small as 10 billionths of a liter (nanoliters) per minute.
