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Millisecond-order rapid micromixing with non-equilibrium electrokinetic phenomena

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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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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program (Grant No. 2011-0009993) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology.

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  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sogang University, Seoul, Republic of Korea

    Seung Jun Lee & Daejoong Kim

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  1. Seung Jun Lee
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  2. Daejoong Kim
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Correspondence to Daejoong Kim.

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Lee, S.J., Kim, D. Millisecond-order rapid micromixing with non-equilibrium electrokinetic phenomena. Microfluid Nanofluid 12, 897–906 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-011-0918-y

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