Alternative flows in a microfluidic device

Abstract

The mixing properties of systems combining alternate flows with obstacles are studied by numerical methods. Preliminary results show that the layers of high and low solute concentration, created by the alternate flow, are split into smaller chunks of fluid, due to the obstacles inserted in the mixing channel increasing the contact area between high and low concentration regions and decreasing the critical mixing length. The improvement in the mixing process shows that this method is very useful for designing mixers in lab-on-a-chip devices.