Micromachined Flow Sensors in Biomedical Applications

Micromachines

Sergio Silvestri¹ 

关键词: flow rate measurement;    micromachined flow sensors;    drug delivery devices;    thermal and mechanical flow sensors;    respiratory monitoring;    blood flow monitoring;   

DOI  :  10.3390/mi3020225

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Application fields of micromachined devices are growing very rapidly due to the continuous improvement of three dimensional technologies of micro-fabrication. In particular, applications of micromachined sensors to monitor gas and liquid flows hold immense potential because of their valuable characteristics (e.g., low energy consumption, relatively good accuracy, the ability to measure very small flow, and small size). Moreover, the feedback provided by integrating microflow sensors to micro mass flow controllers is essential to deliver accurately set target small flows. This paper is a review of some application areas in the biomedical field of micromachined flow sensors, such as blood flow, respiratory monitoring, and drug delivery among others. Particular attention is dedicated to the description of the measurement principles utilized in early and current research. Finally, some observations about characteristics and issues of these devices are also reported.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.