Time-of-flight flow imaging of two-component flow inside a microfluidic chip

Here we report on using NMR imaging and spectroscopy in conjunction with time-of-flight tracking to noninvasively tag and monitor nuclear spins as they flow through the channels of a microfluidic chip. Any species with resolvable chemical-shift signatures can be separately monitored in a single experiment, irrespective of the optical properties of the fluids, thereby eliminating the need for foreign tracers. This is demonstrated on a chip with a mixing geometry in which two fluids converge from separate channels, and is generally applicable to any microfluidic device through which fluid flows within the nuclear spin-lattice relaxation time.