Millisecond-order rapid micromixing with non-equilibrium electrokinetic phenomena |
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Authors: | Seung Jun Lee Daejoong Kim |
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Affiliation: | (1) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea; |
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Abstract: | 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. |
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Keywords: | |
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