Microfluidics is a young and rapidly expanding scientific discipline, which deals with fluids and solutions in miniaturized systems, the so-called lab-on-a-chip systems. It has applications in chemical engineering, pharmaceutics, biotechnology and medicine. As the lab-on-a-chip systems grow in complexity, a proper theoretical understanding becomes increasingly important. The basic idea of the book is to provide a self-contained formulation of the theoretical framework of microfluidics, and at the same time give physical motivation and examples from lab-on-a-chip technology. After three chapters introducing microfluidics, the governing equations for mass, momentum and energy, and some basic flow solutions, the following 14 chapters treat hydraulic resistance/compliance, diffusion/dispersion, time-dependent flow, capillarity, electro- and magneto-hydrodynamics, thermal transport, two-phase flow, complex flow patterns and acousto-fluidics, as well as the new fields of opto- and
