Numerical simulation of centrifugal serpentine micromixers and analyzing mixing quality parameters

Centrifugal microfluidics or the Lab on a CD (LOCD) has developed vast applications in biomedical researches and analyses. Fluid mixing is an application of the LOCD. In this paper, multiple centrifugal micromixers were simulated. Various parameters were originally presumed to have an effect on mixing performance. These parameters include inlet angle, angular velocity, cross-sectional profile, perpendicular length ratio and the number of channels in series. They were each analyzed through simulations. It was gathered that the inlet angle does not significantly affect the mixing quality. Increasing angular velocity steadily increases mixing quality for all geometries. The vertical triangular cross section gives the best mixing quality and the horizontal rectangular cross section has the worst. Also both increasing the perpendicular length ratio and adding an additional microchannel in series to the original, enhances mixing.