Mass flow and tangential momentum accommodation in silicon micromachined channels

High-precision experimental results are reported showing the tangential momentum accommodation coefficient (TMAC) for several gases in contact with single-crystal silicon to be less than unity. A precise and robust experimental platform is demonstrated for measurement of mass flows through silicon micromachined channels due to an imposed pressure gradient. Analytic expressions for isothermal Maxwellian slip flows through long channels are used to determine the TMAC at a variety of Knudsen numbers. Results from experiments using nitrogen, argon and carbon dioxide are presented. For all three gases the TMAC is found to be lower than one, ranging from 0.75 to 0.85.