Steady Microfluidic Measurements of Mutual Diffusion Coefficients of Liquid Binary Mixtures

TL;DR

This paper introduces a microfluidic technique utilizing solvent pervaporation through PDMS to accurately measure mutual diffusion coefficients of liquid binary mixtures across all concentrations in a single experiment.

Contribution

The method enables steady concentration gradient creation and measurement for mixtures where solutes do not permeate PDMS, using activity and density data as inputs.

Findings

Accurate measurement of water-glycerol mutual diffusion coefficient.

Validation through Raman spectroscopy and particle velocimetry.

Applicable to non-permeable solutes in microfluidic systems.

Abstract

We present a microfluidic method leading to accurate measurements of the mutual diffusion coefficient of a liquid binary mixture over the whole solute concentration range in a single experiment. This method fully exploits solvent pervaporation through a poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) membrane to obtain a steady concentration gradient within a microfluidic channel. Our method is applicable for solutes which cannot permeate through PDMS, and requires the activity and the density over the full concentration range as input parameters. We demonstrate the accuracy of our methodology by measuring the mutual diffusion coefficient of the water (1) $+$ glycerol (2) mixture, from measurements of the concentration gradient using Raman confocal spectroscopy and the pervaporation-induced flow using particle tracking velocimetry.