A fast passive and planar liquid sample micromixer

Lab Chip. 2004 Jun;4(3):214-9. doi: 10.1039/b314080f. Epub 2004 Mar 1.

Abstract

A novel microdevice for passively mixing liquid samples based on surface tension and a geometrical mixing chamber is presented. Due to the laminar flow regime on the microscale, mixing becomes difficult if not impossible. We present a micromixer where a constantly changing time dependent flow pattern inside a two sample liquid plug is created as the plug simply passes through the planar mixer chamber. The device requires no actuation during mixing and is fabricated using a single etch process. The effective mixing of two coloured liquid samples is demonstrated.