Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2023 Jul 13;14(7):1414.
doi: 10.3390/mi14071414.

Numerical and Experimental Investigation on a "Tai Chi"-Shaped Planar Passive Micromixer

Annan Xia  1 , Cheng Shen  2 , Chengfeng Wei  3 , Lingchen Meng  1 , Zhiwen Hu  1 , Luming Zhang  1 , Mengyue Chen  1 , Liang Li  1 , Ning He  1 , Xiuqing Hao  1
Affiliations

Numerical and Experimental Investigation on a "Tai Chi"-Shaped Planar Passive Micromixer

Annan Xia et al. Micromachines (Basel). .

Abstract

(1) Background: Microfluidic chips have found extensive applications in multiple fields due to their excellent analytical performance. As an important platform for micro-mixing, the performance of micromixers has a significant impact on analysis accuracy and rate. However, existing micromixers with high mixing efficiency are accompanied by high pressure drop, which is not conducive to the integration of micro-reaction systems; (2) Methods: This paper proposed a novel "Tai Chi"-shaped planar passive micromixer with high efficiency and low pressure drop. The effect of different structural parameters was investigated, and an optimal structure was obtained. Simulations on the proposed micromixer and two other micromixers were carried out while mixing experiments on the proposed micromixer were performed. The experimental and simulation results were compared; (3) Results: The optimized values of the parameters were that the straight channel width w, ratio K of the outer and inner walls of the circular cavity, width ratio w1/w2 of the arc channel, and number N of mixing units were 200 μm, 2.9, 1/2, and 6, respectively. Moreover, the excellent performance of the proposed micromixer was verified when compared with the other two micromixers; (4) Conclusions: The mixing efficiency M at all Re studied was more than 50%, and at most Re, the M was nearly 100%. Moreover, the pressure drop was less than 18,000 Pa.

Keywords: experiments; microfluidic chips; mixing efficiency; pressure drop; simulations.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
(a) Schematic diagram of the Tai Chi-shaped micromixer and (b) Chinese Tai Chi Pattern.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Mesh independence test.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The manufacturing process of micromixer.
Figure 4
Figure 4
(a) Images and (b) schematic diagram of the self-built experimental platform.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Influence of w on (a) mixing efficiency and (b) pressure drop.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Simulation results of flow velocity in the micromixers with (a) w = 100 μm, (b) w = 200 μm, (c) w = 300 μm at different Re numbers.
Figure 7
Figure 7
Influence of K on (a) mixing efficiency and (b) pressure drop.
Figure 8
Figure 8
Simulation results of streamlines of velocity at the A-A section (Figure 1) and in the circular cavity of the micromixers with (a) K = 6.7, (b) K = 3.85, (c) K = 2.9, (d) K = 1.95, and (e) K = 1.63 at typical Re.
Figure 9
Figure 9
Influence of w1/w2 on (a) mixing efficiency and (b) pressure drop.
Figure 10
Figure 10
Simulation results of flow velocity and vortex strength at the B-B section of the micromixers with (a) w1/w2 = 1/2 and (b) w1/w2 = 2/1 at typical Re.
Figure 11
Figure 11
Influence of N on (a) mixing efficiency and (b) pressure drop.
Figure 12
Figure 12
Schematics of the (a) reflux and (b) herringbone groove micromixer structures.
Figure 13
Figure 13
Comparison of the (a) mixing efficiency and (b) pressure drop of the proposed micromixer and the other two micromixers.
Figure 14
Figure 14
Experimental results of fluid flow state in a micromixer at different Re numbers: (a) Re = 0.1; (b) Re = 1; (c) Re = 5; (d) Re = 10; (e) Re = 20; (f) Re = 40; (g) Re = 80.
Figure 15
Figure 15
Comparison between the fluid flow obtained by experimental and simulation at different Re numbers: (a) Re = 0.1; (b) Re = 1; (c) Re = 10; (d) Re = 40.
Figure 16
Figure 16
Comparison of the (a) mixing efficiency and (b) pressure drop between the experimental and simulation results.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Li R., Zhou M., Li J., Wang Z., Zhang W., Yue C., Ma Y., Peng H., Wei Z., Hu Z. Identifying EGFR-expressed cells and detecting EGFR multi-mutations at single-cell level by microfluidic chip. Nano-Micro Lett. 2018;10:16. doi: 10.1007/s40820-017-0168-y. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Fan X.-Y., Deng Z.-F., Yan Y.-Y., Orel V.E., Shypko A., Orel V.B., Ivanova D., Pilarsky C., Tang J., Chen Z.-S. Application of microfluidic chips in anticancer drug screening. Bosn. J. Basic Med. Sci. 2022;22:302. doi: 10.17305/bjbms.2021.6484. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ho N.R., Lim G.S., Sundah N.R., Lim D., Loh T.P., Shao H. Visual and modular detection of pathogen nucleic acids with enzyme–DNA molecular complexes. Nat. Commun. 2018;9:3238. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-05733-0. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Dena I., Trieu N., Lisa L. Complete Procedure for Fabrication of a Fused Silica Ultrarapid Microfluidic Mixer Used in Biophysical Measurements. Micromachines. 2017;8:16.
    1. Phillips R.H., Jain R., Browning Y., Shah R., Kauffman P., Dinh D., Lutz B.R. Flow control using audio tones in resonant microfluidic networks: Towards cell-phone controlled lab-on-a-chip devices. Lab Chip. 2016;16:3260–3267. doi: 10.1039/C6LC00738D. - DOI - PubMed