TY - JOUR
AU - Kim, Daejoong
AB - We report an active micromixer utilizing vortex generation due to non-equilibrium electrokinetics near micro/nanochannel interfaces. Its design is relatively simple, consisting of a U-shaped microchannel and a set of nanochannels. We fabricated the micromixer just using a two-step reactive ion etching process. We observed strong vortex generation in fluorescent microscopy experiments. The mixing performance was evident in a combined pressure-driven and electroosmotic flows, compared with the case with a pure pressure-driven flow. We characterized the micromixer for several conditions: different applied voltages, ion concentrations, flow rates, and nanochannel widths. The experimental results show that the mixing performance is better with a higher applied voltage, a lower ion concentration, and a wider nanochannel width. We quantified the mixing characteristics in terms of mixing time. The lowest mixing time was 2 milliseconds with the voltage of 230 V and potassium chloride solutions of 0.1 mM. We expect that the micromixer is beneficial in several applications requiring rapid mixing.
TI - Millisecond-order rapid micromixing with non-equilibrium electrokinetic phenomena
JF - Microfluids and Nanofluids
DO - 10.1007/s10404-011-0918-y
DA - 2011-12-20
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/millisecond-order-rapid-micromixing-with-non-equilibrium-2BQnw5B9wl
SP - 897
EP - 906
VL - 12
IS - 6
DP - DeepDyve
ER -