Fabrication of micromixers utilizing shedding effect induced by electrokinetic instability

This paper proposes a T-shaped micromixer featuring 45° parallelogram barriers within the mixing channel. The proposed device obtains a rapid mixing of two sample fluids by means of the electrokinetic instability induced by shedding effect which is produced as an appropriate intensity of DC electric field of is applied. The proposed device uses a single high-voltage power source to simultaneously drive and mix the sample fluids. The effectiveness of the mixer is characterized experimentally as a function of the applied electrical field intensity and the extent to which the parallelogram barriers obstruct the mixing channel. The experimental results indicate that the mixing performance reaches 91.2% at a cross-section located 2.3 mm downstream of the T-junction when the barriers obstruct four-fifths of the channel width and an electrical field of 300V/cm is applied. The micromixing method presented in this study provides a simple low-cost solution to mixing problems in lab-on-a-chip systems.