The L-10 Laboratory of Micro and Nano-Fluidics is a result of the multidisciplinary project SOP-IEC, O.2.1.2 No. 209, ID 665, Microfluidic factory for assisted self-assembly of nanosystems (MICRONANOFAB),  which gathers experts from micro- nanotechnology and chemistry, has the fundamental objective the realization of a prototype of an integrated microfluidic system able to dose, encapsulate and deliver different chemicals for medical treatment.

The aim of the project is to create and develop a research nucleus with a high degree of scientific and technological competence with direct implications on the development of bio-nano-engineering in Romania, corroborated with the enlargement of the knowledge database and of the research capacity with favorable implications on national and international competitivity in the field of biomedicine integrated microfluidics.

The primary focus of our research is the design of microfluidic devices for applications in clinical diagnostics and regenerative medicine. These devices are fabricated using technology originally designed for the semiconductor industry and are capable of handling and manipulating small volumes of fluids and small numbers of cells. Our expertise is in numerical simulations, microfabrication and functionalization of microfluidic channels and achieving high-resolution cell separation through magnetophoresis or dielectrophoresis.

The research work is dedicated to the development of micro/nano technologies, especially glass silicon and polymeric micromachining, and their applications in micro and nanofluidics. Microfabrication is performed using dedicated facilities in the MINAFAB cleanroom. With the enabling technologies, we fabricated devices and investigate fundamental fluidic effects in the micro scale such as convective/diffusive mixing, viscoelasticity, fluid/structural coupling, hydrodynamic focusing, dielectrophoresis and magnetophoresis. The knowledge from this fundamental research results in a number of microfluidic components such as microviscosimeters, micropumps, micromixers and microsensors.

The Micro and Nanofluidic field lies at the interfaces between engineering, physics, and biochemistry; and aims to develop lab-on-a-chip systems.

Engineering challenges include the realization of optimized processes in mixing, reaction, separation, pre-concentration, and detection of chemical species.

The Micro and Nanofluidics laboratory conducts research in two primary areas: the investigation of fluid flow and rheology at the microscale, and its application to optimize lab-on-a-chip devices based biosensors. In the microfluidics, we study fluid flow in devices with length scales of order one to one hundred microns. Our interests include developing micron resolution particle image velocimetry (micro-PIV), micro-mixing devices and protocols, particle manipulation using dielectrophoresis (DEP) and magnetophoresis (MAP), and analysis of boundary conditions at the microscale.

For a more detailed characterization of the physical phenomena, the research must contain Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling, consisting of: single phase and multiphase flows, mixing, turbulence, heat transfer, reactions for industrial applications, user defined function implementation for additional flow parameters setting, magnetohydrodynamics, completed with complex geometry and mesh generation and post-processing data in specialized software.