A novel microfluidic mixer using aperiodic perturbation flows

A novel technique is proposed for enhancing the mixing performance of a ‘crisscross’ microfluidic mixer by means of aperiodically-varying perturbation flows. The effects of the perturbation and geometry parameters on the fluid flow characteristics and mixing performance are analyzed numerically. In performing the simulations, the flow field and species concentration field are obtained by solving the two-dimensional time-dependent Navier–Stokes equations and the convection–diffusion equation, respectively. In addition, the oscillating source used to modulate the perturbation flows is modeled using the Sprott system. The results show that the irregularly-alternating flow perturbations cause a repeated stretching and folding of the species streams and enhance the mixing performance as a result. It is shown that an effective improvement in the mixing performance can be obtained through a suitable choice of the Sprott system scaling factor. Moreover, it is shown that having assigned an appropriate scaling factor, the mixing performance can be further improved by specifying suitable values of the geometry and perturbation parameters.

► Aperiodic perturbation flows are modulated using the Sprott system.
► Aperiodic perturbation flows cause an irregularly-alternating perturbation effect.
► Mixing efficiency is enhanced using a suitable scaling factor of the Sprott system.