This text focuses on the physics of liquid transport in micro- and nanofabricated systems. It evolved from a graduate course I have taught at Cornell University since 2005, titled “Physics of Micro- and Nanoscale Fluid Mechanics,” housed primarily in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department but attracting students from Physics, Applied Physics, Chemical Engineering, Materials Science, and Biological Engineering. This text was designed with the goal of bringing together several areas that are often taught separately – namely, fluid mechanics, electrodynamics, and interfacial chemistry and electrochemistry – with a focused goal of preparing the modern microfluidics researcher to analyze and model continuum fluid-mechanical systems encountered when working with micro- and nanofabricated devices. It omits many standard topics found in other texts – turbulent and transitional flows, rheology, transport in gel phase, Van der Waals forces, electrode kinetics, colloid stability, and electrode potentials are just a few of countless examples of fascinating and useful topics that are found in other texts, but are omitted here as they are not central to the fluid flows I wish to discuss.

Although I hope that this text may also serve as a useful reference for practicing researchers, it has been designed primarily for classroom instruction. It is thus occasionally repetitive and discursive (where others might state results succinctly and only once) when this is deemed useful for instruction. Worked sample problems are inserted throughout to assist the student, and exercises are included at the end of each chapter to facilitate use in classes.