Method and integrated device for analyzing liquid flow and liquid-solid interface interaction

#1. Field of the Invention

#The present invention generally relates to analyzing liquid flow and liquid-solid interface interaction and more particularly to an integrated device for self-contained liquid flow and liquid-solid interface interaction analysis that enables the comparison with and the validation of computational models of such liquid solid interactions.

#2. Background Description

#The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be better understood from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which:

#FIG. 1 shows an example of fabricating a lab-on-a-chip for simulating fluid flow according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention;

#FIG. 2A shows an example of a plan view of a simple lab-on-a-chip site;

#Turning now to the drawings and, more particularly, FIG. 1 shows an example 100 of fabricating a lab-on-a-chip for simulating fluid flow according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. Essentially, the lab-on-a-chip fabrication 100 uses typical state of the art semiconductor integrated circuit fabrication techniques (e.g., CMOS chip fabrication) to form a template or templates and sufficient wiring and analysis support circuitry. The template has physical patterns that represent fluid flow in a geological space. Once formed and verified/validated, the template simulates fluid flow through fluid channels representative of the geological space. Typically the fully formed template structure is capped with a capping layer. The capping layer may include the simulation support circuitry, or the simulation support circuitry may be opposite the cap, on or in, the same semiconductor wafer supporting the template(s). Thus, the lab-on-a-chip enables liquid flow analysis through a defined space with defined properties, and experimental validation of the results on a wide range (orders of magnitude) of scale lengths under well-defined laboratory conditions, ranging from nanometers (nm) to millimeters (mm).

#Fabrication begins 102 with physical information that determines the boundary system conditions. Next, transforming 104 the physical information algorithmically, equations mathematically describe the physical structures. A template file 106, created from the equations, is input to both flow simulation 108 and template manufacturing 110. Flow simulation 108 predicts the flow behavior in the geometric structure defined by the template file 106. Simultaneously, template preprocessing determines 110 specific manufacturing requirements, and provided manufacturing is feasible within manufacturing process, the template file 106 is converted 112 into a suitable format for manufacturing a physical template 114. If the template file 106 is unmanufacturable, the template file 106 may be adjusted or recreated. Comparing 116 flow simulation 108 results against the physical template 114, either the comparison results do not match and the template file 106 requires additional tweaking; or the physical template 114 is complete. If additional tweaking is necessary, then additional physical information 102 may be required to iteratively arrive at a suitable template file 106. The completed physical template has use 118, for example, modeling oil reservoir flow or in bio-engineering.

#The physical information 102 is geometrical data describing physical patterns and includes boundary conditions defining a flow field within a porous media. The boundary conditions may be extracted from the field experimentally, or physically measured, e.g., computerized tomography (CT) scanning rock samples.