Thermal compact modeling approach of droplet microreactor based Lab-on-a-Chip devices

• A novel compact model for thermal aware design of droplet reactor based LoC devices is presented.
• Model is applicable for various boundary conditions e.g. volumetric enzyme reaction.
• The compact model was validated by conventional CFD solver and resulted in good match.
• The compact model provided a 450 fold reduction in execution time.
• As a behavioral model it can be easily integrated into the IC-MEMS design flow.

The paper presents a novel compact model which enables the thermal analysis of microchannels consisting of continuously moving microdroplets with biologically active content inside. The compact model utilizes the switched capacitor approach to describe the convective heat transfer and as a behavioral model, it can be easily integrated into an IC-MEMS design flow. With this novel approach the temperature profile of the channel can be calculated in minutes compared to conventional numerical techniques that requires days or weeks. The model was validated by a standard CFD solver and a good match was achieved.