A barrier embedded chaotic micromixer

Mixing enhancement has drawn a great attention to designing of micromixers, since the flow in a microchannel is usually characterized by a low Reynolds number (Re) which makes mixing quite a difficult task to complete. In this regard, we present a new chaotic passive micromixer, called a barrier embedded micromixer (BEM). In the BEM, chaotic flow is induced by periodic perturbation of the velocity field due to periodically inserted barriers along the top surface of the channel while a helical type of flow is obtained by slanted grooves on the bottom surface in the pressure driven flow. A T-channel and a microchannel with only slanted grooves were fabricated for the purpose of experimental comparison. Mixing performance has been experimentally characterized in two ways: (i) change of average mixing intensity by means of phenolphthalein and (ii) mixing patterns via a confocal microscope. Experimental results showed that BEM has better mixing performance than the other two. A characteristic required mixing length, defined in view of intensity change, increases logarithmically with Re in BEM. The confocal microscope images indicated that BEM could achieve almost complete mixing. The chaotic mixing mechanism, proposed in this study can be easily applied to integrated microfluidic systems, such as micro-total-analysis-systems, lab-on-a-chip and so on.