화학공학소재연구정보센터
Chemical Engineering Journal, Vol.313, 1364-1369, 2017
Pulsatile micromixing using water-head-driven microfluidic oscillators
This study presents a pulsatile micromixer which does not use any dynamic off-chip controllers to achieve homogeneous mixing. The micromixer system consists of oscillator and mixer units that include microfluidic valves and elastomeric membranes. The oscillator unit autonomously generates pulsatile pressure using the constant input of water head pressure. Driven by the pulsatile pressure, periodic fluidic bands are generated in the mixer unit and are mixed within a short channel length. In this way, the oscillator unit controls fluidic switching frequency and the mixer unit regulates flow rate, separately. The mixing performance for various channel widths, switching frequencies, and flow rates is analyzed. The micromixer shows homogenous mixing with a mixing index of similar to 90% for a flow rate of up to 20 mu L/min and switching frequency in the range of 14-20 Hz. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.