Micromachines 2012, 3(2), 225-243; doi:10.3390/mi3020225
Review

Micromachined Flow Sensors in Biomedical Applications

Sergio Silvestri* email and Emiliano Schenaemail
Center for Integrated Research, Unit of Measurements and Biomedical Instrumentation, Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma, Via Álvaro del Portillo, 21-00128 Rome, Italy
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 23 February 2012; in revised form: 6 March 2012 / Accepted: 21 March 2012 / Published: 26 March 2012
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Micro Flow Controllers)
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Abstract: Application fields of micromachined devices are growing very rapidly due to the continuous improvement of three dimensional technologies of micro-fabrication. In particular, applications of micromachined sensors to monitor gas and liquid flows hold immense potential because of their valuable characteristics (e.g., low energy consumption, relatively good accuracy, the ability to measure very small flow, and small size). Moreover, the feedback provided by integrating microflow sensors to micro mass flow controllers is essential to deliver accurately set target small flows. This paper is a review of some application areas in the biomedical field of micromachined flow sensors, such as blood flow, respiratory monitoring, and drug delivery among others. Particular attention is dedicated to the description of the measurement principles utilized in early and current research. Finally, some observations about characteristics and issues of these devices are also reported.
Keywords: flow rate measurement; micromachined flow sensors; drug delivery devices; thermal and mechanical flow sensors; respiratory monitoring; blood flow monitoring

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Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Silvestri, S.; Schena, E. Micromachined Flow Sensors in Biomedical Applications. Micromachines 2012, 3, 225-243.

AMA Style

Silvestri S, Schena E. Micromachined Flow Sensors in Biomedical Applications. Micromachines. 2012; 3(2):225-243.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Silvestri, Sergio; Schena, Emiliano. 2012. "Micromachined Flow Sensors in Biomedical Applications." Micromachines 3, no. 2: 225-243.

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