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Influence of adjusting the inlet channel confluence angle on mixing behaviour in inertial microfluidic mixers

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Abstract

Recent drive for high-throughput microfluidic systems has triggered tremendous research effort to develop efficient, high-throughput microfluidic mixers. In particular, inducing a fluid–fluid collision at high flow rate in microfluidic channel has been suggested as an effective strategy to enhance mixing. However, previous studies using T-shaped microfluidic mixers showed that, in addition to fluid–fluid collision, the confluence angle of fluid stream in microfluidic channel also has a dramatic effect on mixing. This study suggests the possibility to enhance mixing by simply changing the inlet confluence angle of the streams. In this work, we assess the mixing behaviour of microfluidic mixers with variable inlet confluence angle with the Reynolds number (Re) range of 2.83–566. It is shown that the increase in inlet confluence angle enables the reduction of Re required for complete mixing. Simulation results demonstrate that increasing the confluence angle facilitates the interaction of vortices in mixers to induce an enhanced mixing. We further demonstrate that the increased interaction of vortices also prompts the turbulent emulsification where a significant reduction in emulsion size is observed for each mixer with increased inlet confluence angle at same Re.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Wearable Platform Materials Technology Center (WMC) funded by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) Grant of the Korean Government (MSIP) (No. 2016R1A5A1009926) and by the Center for Advanced Soft-Electronics funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning as Global Frontier Project (CASE-2011-0031638).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea

    Jae Bem You, Yunho Choi & Sung Gap Im

  2. KAIST Institute for NanoCentury, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, 34141, Republic of Korea

    Sung Gap Im

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  1. Jae Bem You
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  2. Yunho Choi
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  3. Sung Gap Im
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Correspondence to Sung Gap Im.

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You, J.B., Choi, Y. & Im, S.G. Influence of adjusting the inlet channel confluence angle on mixing behaviour in inertial microfluidic mixers. Microfluid Nanofluid 21, 121 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-017-1958-8

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