Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Fluid Flow Through a Micromixer With the Presence of Electric Field

Abstract Fluid flows in a microchannel with highly ordered laminar fashion. For this reason, two different fluid streams cannot mix easily, or it takes a very long time. The problem becomes intense for large molecules such as peptides, proteins, and nucleic acids during rapid mixing for biochemical applications in a microfluidic device. Many researchers tried to solve this problem by applying an electric potential. In this work, a numerical simulation was performed on a 2D micromixer. Four symmetric electrodes were placed on the wall of a straight microchannel of width 19 μm. The electroosmotic slip velocity boundary condition was used to create the turbulence on the laminar fluid stream. It was found that this model creates a well-mixed flow at the channel outlet. Then the input parameters were changed to compare the mixing performance in terms of concentration distribution at the channel outlet. Channel width, inter-electrodes gap, the magnitude of electric potential, frequency of the electric potential and asymmetricity of the electrodes were changed and results were compared. An experimental micromixer like the numerical model was fabricated by dc magnetron sputtering machine. Four gold electrodes (thickness, 120 nm) were sputtered on top of a silicon substrate. The value of the input parameters was chosen based on the results obtained from the numerical simulation. To test the mixing functionality of our device the movement of tracer particles was tracked down on the zone surrounded by four electrodes. The micro-PIV (Particulate Image Velocimetry) system was used to analyze the movement of the tracer particles and visualize the flow field in the mixing zone. The magnitude of the AC electric potential and frequency was changed to find out the optimum input parameters for the micromixer. These results could play an important role to design and improve a micromixer design using an AC electric field. A micromixer has many potential applications in biology (DNA analysis, enzyme Screening), chemistry (synthesis, polymerization) and detection (drug discovery, diagnosis).