Case Study: Fluidic mixing options

Fluid mixing is the principle of merging two immiscible fluids to a homogenous ratio. As microfluidics is an enabling technology for bioprocesses in life sciences, mixing plays a very big role in applications such as biotechnological diagnostics, biosensing, DNA analysis and sequencing, but also in flow chemistry and micro reaction applications.

In microfluidics, turbulent flow leads to cross-flows which fasten mixing. Adding active mixing principles like agitation completes the efficient mixing processes. In microfluidics laminar flow commonly is the governing flow type. The lack of cross-flows leads to the fact diffusion is the governing mixing principle. Diffusion is a very slow process and this would need very long flow channels which would lead the characteristics of microfluidics ad absurdum. So, scientists have developed many principles for introducing cross-flows artificially. Even active mixing is possible at microfluidic footprint.

The objective of this case study is to give a quick overview of the general mixing behaviour in microfluidics and to demonstrate three different mixing principles.

You can read the full Case Study here: Passive, semi-active and active fluid mixing in microfluidics for bioprocesses in life sciences