Two-wavelength Raman imaging for non-intrusive monitoring of transient temperature in microfluidic devices

The present study proposes a non-intrusive visualization technique based on two-wavelength Raman imaging for in-situ monitoring of the unsteady temperature field in microfluidic systems. The measurement principle relies on the contrasting temperature dependencies of hydrogen-bonded and non-hydrogen-bonded OH stretching modes of the water Raman band, whose intensities were simultaneously captured by two cameras equipped with corresponding bandpass filters. The temperature distributions were then determined from the intensity ratio of the simultaneously-obtained Raman images, which enables compensation for temporal fluctuation and spatial inhomogeneity of the excitation laser intensity. A calibration experiment exhibited a linear relationship between the temperature and the intensity ratio in the range 293-343 K and least-regression analysis gave an uncertainty of 1.43 K at 95% confidence level. By applying the calibration data, time series temperature distributions were quantitatively visualized in a Y-shaped milli-channel at a spatial resolution of 6.0 x 6.0 mu m(2) with an acquisition time of 16.5 s. The measurement result clearly exhibited the temporal evolution of the temperature field and was compared with the values obtained by thermocouples. This paper therefore demonstrates the viability of employing the two-wavelength Raman imaging technique for temperature measurements in microfluidic devices.