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.
In this paper, we also mention some other resources. You might want to check out our video about bi-directional flow and this one about activating a microfluidic chip. Also, thank you to our partners microfluidic ChipShop and memetis. Thanks to their components we were able to create this Case Study for you.
We also post any new information, applications and facts surrounding microfluidics on our LinkedIn channel. Follow us there as well!