NIST Calculations May Improve Temperature Measures for Microfluidics
(PhysOrg.com) -- If you wanted to know if your child had a fever or be certain that the roast in the oven was thoroughly cooked, you would, of course, use a thermometer that you trusted to give accurate readings at any temperature within its range. However, it isn`t that simple for researchers who need to measure temperatures in microfluidic systems -tiny, channel-lined devices used in medical diagnostics, DNA forensics and `lab-on-a-chip` chemical analyzers -as their current `thermometer` can only be precisely calibrated for one reference temperature. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have proposed a mathematical solution that enables researchers to calibrate the `thermometer` for microfluidic systems so that all temperatures are covered.