Mixing high-viscosity fluids via acoustically driven bubbles

We present an acoustofluidic micromixer which can perform rapid and homogeneous mixing of highly viscous fluids in the presence of an acoustic field. In this device, two high-viscosity polyethylene glycol (PEG) solutions were co-injected into a three-inlet PDMS microchannel with the center inlet containing a constant stream of nitrogen flow which forms bubbles in the device. When these bubbles were excited by an acoustic field generated via a piezoelectric transducer, the two solutions mixed homogenously due to the combination of acoustic streaming, droplet ejection, and bubble eruption effects. The mixing efficiency of this acoustofluidic device was evaluated using PEG-700 solutions which are similar to 106 times more viscous than deionized (DI) water. Our results indicate homogenous mixing of the PEG-700 solutions with a similar to 0.93 mixing index. The acoustofluidic micromixer is compact, inexpensive, easy to operate, and has the capacity to mix highly viscous fluids within 50 ms.