Computational fluid dynamic analysis of poly(dimethyl siloxane) magnetic actuator based micromixer

The current work demonstrates the modeling and simulation of the species mixing in the cylindrical chamber with the microrotor using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The chamber was connected with two microchannel inlets to infuse species with an outlet. Simulations study of the mixing efficiencies at different rpm of the microrotor over a wide range of species flow velocities is reported. Further, the simulations were performed for species mixing at different position of the microrotor in the chamber. Maximum mixing efficiency (∼90%) of the species was achieved at 1500 rpm when the microrotor was at top of the chamber. Also, a poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) based micromixer was fabricated with a magnetic field driven PDMS-magnetic actuator. The simulation results were validated by mixing of dyes at different rpm of the PDMS magnetic actuator (microrotor) in the micromixer. To apply the technique, rifampicin drug was loaded on to TiO2 nanoparticles. It can be seen from TEM that the drug gets uniformly loaded on the nanoparticles due to virtue of high degree of mixing efficiency.