Leveraging stimuli responsive hydrogels for on/off control of mixing

Microfluidic mixers are an important component in microfluidic devices. This paper presents a micromixer which can control mixing with responsive hydrogel actuators to modulate mixing between two adjacent fluids dependant on the chemistries of the fluid. This is achieved by the responsive hydrogels swelling or contracting under different stimuli, which alters the mixing between the two fluids. We present this device using standard pH responsive hydrogels for two different device designs and demonstrate altered mixing profiles based on the pH of the fluid streams. For the T-shaped device an increase in mixing efficiency from 18.3% to 34.5% is observed between the contracted and expanded hydrogel states. For the modified T-shaped device mixing efficiency in the contracted state is 25.0% while in the expanded state efficiency increases to 72.9%. This can be used as a mixer that has on/off functionality of an active mixer, based on the pH of the mixing streams, with the advantages a passive mixer offers. Other responsive hydrogel chemistries could be substituted into the device to achieve many different triggers for mixing. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.