This article investigates how electromagnetic forces affect fluid friction and thermal energy exchange in microchannels. An externally applied electric field can be used to manipulate charge patterns along the walls of a microchannel, thereby controlling the speed and direction of liquid transport. In this article, uniform non-polarized electromagnetic forces are imparted across a thermal diffusion layer in a rectangular microchannel. Source terms are added to the axial momentum equation to predict spatial effects of electromagnetic forces on the near-wall velocity and temperature profiles. Fluid friction associated with electromagnetic forces along the wall is investigated based on these near-wall profiles. Also, convective energy exchange is studied with both viscous dissipation and Ohmic heating in the thermal energy equation. The analytical formulation of heat transfer considers boundary conditions of a constant wall temperature and constant wall heat flux. Numerical results of fluid velocity, temperature and friction coefficient are presented and compared successfully against past data. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.