Fundamentals, biomedical applications and future potential of micro-scale cavitation-a review
Seyedali Seyedmirzaei Sarraf, Farzad Rokhsar Talabazar, İlayda Namlı, Mohammadamin Maleki, Araz Sheibani Aghdam, Ghazaleh Gharib, Dmitry Grishenkov, Morteza Ghorbani, Ali Koşar
Abstract
Thanks to the developments in the area of microfluidics, the cavitation-on-a-chip concept enabled researchers to control and closely monitor the cavitation phenomenon in micro-scale. In contrast to conventional scale, where cavitation bubbles are hard to be steered and manipulated, lab-on-a-chip devices provide suitable platforms to conduct smart experiments and design reliable devices to carefully harness the collapse energy of cavitation bubbles in different bio-related and industrial applications. However, bubble behavior deviates to some extent when confined to micro-scale geometries in comparison to macro-scale. Therefore, fundamentals of micro-scale cavitation deserve in-depth investigations. In this review, first we discussed the physics and fundamentals of cavitation induced by tension-based as well as energy deposition-based methods within microfluidic devices and discussed the similarities and differences in micro and macro-scale cavitation. We then covered and discussed recent developments in bio-related applications of micro-scale cavitation chips. Lastly, current challenges and future research directions towards the implementation of micro-scale cavitation phenomenon to emerging applications are presented.