Experiments on transformation microfluidics: cloaking flow and transport without metamaterials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a microfluidic cloaking method that manipulates flow and transport without using metamaterials, leveraging hydrodynamic principles and topological analogies to achieve cloaking effects.

Contribution

It introduces an experimental framework for cloaking flow and transport in microfluidics without metamaterials, utilizing hydrodynamic cloaking based on d'Alembert's paradox.

Findings

Successful experimental demonstration of flow and transport cloaking.

Identification of microfluidic cloaks as open-space diffusion filters.

Strong topological analogy with classical H-Filters.

Abstract

Cloaking effects have now been identified in almost every field of physics. In all cases, substrate-carved metamaterials make the reshaping of the concealed volume impossible. In fluids, recognizing that d'Alembert's paradox describes in itself a hydrodynamic cloaking mechanism, we propose and characterize experimentally a framework to cloak both flow and transport simultaneously within a reshapable fluid volume. The properties of microfluidic cloaks as open-space diffusion filters (O-Filters) are further investigated. They reveal a strong topological analogy with classical H-Filters in microfluidics.