Temperature measurement in microchannel liquid flow by measuring fluorescence polarization

A fluid temperature measurement technique based on fluorescence polarization is developed and applied to measure the two-dimensional temperature distributions in microchannel. In this measurement method, the fluorescence depolarization due to rotational Brownian motion of the fluorescent molecules in the solution is measured and converted to fluid temperature. Since the fluorescence polarization degree is independent to fluorescence intensity, the measurement is less influenced by the fluorescence quenching effect, which is an issue in laser-induced fluorescence (LIF) method. Experiments were performed using a microchannel with fluorescent molecules solved in water. The effects of the fluorescent molecule concentration, fluid pH and fluid temperature on the fluorescence polarization degree are discussed to evaluate the influence of the quenching effects and to derive the correlation curves. Furthermore, the proposed method was applied to measure the temperature distribution with linear gradient generated in the microchannel. The results showed that the fluorescence polarization is considerably less sensitive to quenching factors compared with the fluorescence intensity measurements. A linear correlation between the polarization degree and the fluid temperature was obtained. This relationship agreed well with the theoretical one. Further, measurement of two-dimensional temperature distribution in the microchannel agreed well with the values obtained by the thermocouple measurements. These results confirmed the validity of the measurements and feasibility of the proposed method.