Flow and heat transfer for gas flowing in microchannels: a review

Microchannels are currently being used in many areas and have high potential for applications in many other areas, which are considered realistic by experts. The application areas include medicine, biotechnology, avionics, consumer electronics, telecommunications, metrology, computer technology, office equipment and home appliances, safety technology, process engineering, robotics, automotive engineering and environmental protection. A number of these applications are introduced in this paper, followed by a critical review of the works on the flow and heat transfer for gas flowing in microchannels. The results show that the flow and heat transfer characteristics of a gas flowing in microchannels can not be adequately predicted by the theories and correlations developed for conventional sized channels. The results of theoretical and experimental works are discussed and summarized along with suggestions for future research directions.