NIST calculations may improve temperature measures for microfluidics
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 analysers - as their current 'thermometer' can only be precisely calibrated for one reference temperature. Now, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have proposed a mathematical solution that enables researchers to calibrate the 'thermometer' for microfluidic systems so that all temperatures are covered...