Efficient Mixing of Microfluidic Chip with a Three-Dimensional Spiral Structure

Junyao Wang; Xingyu Chen; Huan Liu; Yunpeng Li; Tianhong Lang; Rui Wang; Bowen Cui; Weihua Zhu

doi:10.1021/acsomega.1c06352

Efficient Mixing of Microfluidic Chip with a Three-Dimensional Spiral Structure

ACS Omega. 2021 Dec 21;7(1):1527-1536. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.1c06352. eCollection 2022 Jan 11.

Authors

Junyao Wang¹, Xingyu Chen¹, Huan Liu¹, Yunpeng Li¹, Tianhong Lang¹, Rui Wang¹, Bowen Cui¹, Weihua Zhu²

Affiliations

¹ School of Mechanical Engineering, Northeast Electric Power University, Jilin 132012, China.
² Jilin Technology College of Electronic Information, Jilin 132021, China.

Abstract

In this paper, a helical three-dimensional (3D) passive micromixer is presented. A three-dimensional spiral passive micromixer is fabricated through the 3D printing technology and the polymer dissolution technology. The main process is as follows: First of all, a high-impact polystyrene (HIPS) material was used to make a 3D spiral channel mold. Second, the channel mold was dissolved in limonene solvent. The mixing experiment shows that the single helix structure can improve the mixing efficiency to 0.85, compared with the mixing efficiency of 0.78 in the traditional T-shaped two-dimensional (2D)-plane channel. Different screw diameters, screw number structures, and flow rates are used to test the mixing effect. The optimal helical structure is 5 mm, and the flow rate is 2.0 mL/min. Finally, the mixing efficiency of the 3D helical micromixer can reach 0.948. The results show that the three-dimensional helical structure can effectively improve the mixing efficiency.