Static micromixers using alternating whirls and lamination

We have designed, fabricated and compared four different types of static micromixers, including the mixers using straight channel flow, microblock-induced alternating whirl flow, microchannel-induced lamination flow and combined alternating whirl–lamination flow. Among them, the alternating whirl–lamination (AWL-type) mixer, composed of rotationally arranged microblocks and dividing microchannels, is effective to reduce the mixing length over wide flow rate ranges. We characterize the performance of the fabricated mixers through the flow visualization technique using phenolphthalein solution. We verify that the AWL-type micromixer shows mixing lengths of 2.8–5.8 mm for Re = 0.26–26 with a pressure drop under 5 kPa. Compared to previous mixers, requiring mixing lengths of 7–17 mm, the AWL-type micromixer results in 60% reduction of the mixing lengths. Due to the reduced mixing lengths within reasonable pressure drop ranges, the present micromixers have potential for uses in miniaturized micro-total-analysis-systems (µTAS).

[1]  I. Mezić,et al.  Chaotic Mixer for Microchannels , 2002, Science.

[2]  P. Tabeling,et al.  A dielectrophoretic chaotic mixer , 2002, Technical Digest. MEMS 2002 IEEE International Conference. Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (Cat. No.02CH37266).

[3]  Stephen Wiggins,et al.  Foundations of chaotic mixing , 2004, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences.

[4]  Dong Sung Kim,et al.  A barrier embedded chaotic micromixer , 2004 .

[5]  Nam-Trung Nguyen,et al.  Micromixers?a review , 2005 .

[6]  M. Ward,et al.  Micro T-mixer as a rapid mixing micromixer , 2004 .

[7]  P. Yager,et al.  Diffusion-based extraction in a microfabricated device , 1997 .

[8]  Theodore C Marentis,et al.  Ultrasonic mixing in microfluidic channels using integrated transducers. , 2004, Analytical chemistry.

[9]  Robin H. Liu,et al.  Passive mixing in a three-dimensional serpentine microchannel , 2000, Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.

[10]  D. Beebe,et al.  Three-dimensional micro-channel fabrication in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer , 2000, Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.

[11]  E. Yoon,et al.  A disposable DNA sample preparation microfluidic chip for nucleic acid probe assay , 2002, Technical Digest. MEMS 2002 IEEE International Conference. Fifteenth IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (Cat. No.02CH37266).