Pressure-driven flow is a method to displace liquids in a

capillary A capillary is a small blood vessel, from 5 to 10 micrometres in diameter, and is part of the microcirculation system. Capillaries are microvessels and the smallest blood vessels in the body. They are composed of only the tunica intima (the inn ...

or microfluidic channel with

pressure Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and eve ...

. The pressure is typically generated pneumatically by

compressed air Compressed air is air kept under a pressure that is greater than atmospheric pressure. Compressed air in vehicle tires and shock absorbers are commonly used for improved traction and reduced vibration. Compressed air is an important medium for t ...

or other gases (

nitrogen Nitrogen is a chemical element; it has Symbol (chemistry), symbol N and atomic number 7. Nitrogen is a Nonmetal (chemistry), nonmetal and the lightest member of pnictogen, group 15 of the periodic table, often called the Pnictogen, pnictogens. ...

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

, etc) or by

electrical Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

and magnetical fields or

gravitation In physics, gravity (), also known as gravitation or a gravitational interaction, is a fundamental interaction, a mutual attraction between all massive particles. On Earth, gravity takes a slightly different meaning: the observed force b ...

Physical fundamentals

It is known from

thermodynamics Thermodynamics is a branch of physics that deals with heat, Work (thermodynamics), work, and temperature, and their relation to energy, entropy, and the physical properties of matter and radiation. The behavior of these quantities is governed b ...

that conjugated quantities scale in a different manner. Two classes can be distinguished: intensive quantities as temperature ''T'', pressure ''P'' and amount of substance ''N'' or extensive quantities as entropy ''S'', volume ''V'' and chemical potential ''μ''. Extensive quantities scale with system size, whereas the intensive quantities do not. The quantity pressure, for example, is defined as the (differential) quotient of two extensive variables: ''p''=d''E''/d''V'' (energy ''E'' and volume ''V'') and therefore scale independent as the same scaling factors appearing in the nominator as well as the denominator cancel. In microsystems the problem rises that the extremely small volumes are difficult to be controlled. The reason is the predominance of surface effects as surface charges, van-der-Waals forces and entropic effects (e.g. dewetting due to rough surfaces: the restriction in degrees of freedom of molecules penetrating such a surface is entropically more expensive than staying in bulk). Furthermore, the microsystem has to be controlled from a macroscopic human scale.

References

Fluid dynamics {{fluiddynamics-stub