Enhancement of passive mixing via arc microchannel with sharp corner structure

A novel microfluidic device for efficient passive mixing is reported. A series of sharp corner structures designed on side wall of an arc microchannel was utilized to induce three-dimensional vortices, which strongly stretched and folded the interface and significantly increased the interfacial contact area between different fluids. Additionally, the sharp corner structure induced high radial velocity and reduced the diffusion length because of the restricted effect of the geometrical structure. Eventually, the fluid mixing was significantly enhanced, and a mixing efficiency from ∼87% to 92% was achieved at moderate Reynolds number (Re) from 3.0 to 24.2 (10 to 80 μl min-1). The influence of the sharp corner position on the mixing was also investigated by the experiment and the numerical simulation. With single-layer structure and high mixing efficiency, the present device has great potential in the mixing process in variety of lab-chip applications, such as clinic diagnosis and analytic chemistry.