Design and Analysis of a Chaotic Micromixer with Vortices Modulation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new vortex modulation design for a passive chaotic micromixer, called CDM, with experimental and numerical analysis demonstrating detailed mixing patterns and potential biochemical diagnostic applications.

Contribution

The paper presents the design and analysis of a novel circulation-disturbance micromixer with vortex modulation, combining experimental and numerical methods for detailed flow visualization.

Findings

Successful experimental and numerical analysis of the CDM.

Visualization of mixing patterns using flow topology and particle tracking.

Potential application of FRET-based biochemical diagnosis in microfluidics.

Abstract

A novel design for vortex modulation of a passive chaotic micromixer, named a circulation-disturbance micromixer (CDM), has been achieved and analyzed experimentally and numerically. The systematic numerical analyses - topological flow characteristics and particle tracking method - have been developed, that enable visualization of detailed mixing patterns. To display the cross section of mixing region of flows in our CDM, the biotin-streptavidin binding is detected through the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) pair of fluorescent proteins - R-phycoerythrin (RPE) and cross-linked allophycocyanin (clAPC). We expect the diagnosis technique using FRET will be successfully applied to biochemical analysis in microfluidic system.