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Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls
We report a quasi T-channel electrokinetics-based micromixer with electrically conductive sidewalls, where the electric field is in the transverse direction of the flow and parallel to the conductivity gradient at the interface between two fluids to be mixed. Mixing results are first compared with a...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
MDPI
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8777699/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35056199 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13010034 |
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author | Yang, Fang Zhao, Wei Kuang, Cuifang Wang, Guiren |
author_facet | Yang, Fang Zhao, Wei Kuang, Cuifang Wang, Guiren |
author_sort | Yang, Fang |
collection | PubMed |
description | We report a quasi T-channel electrokinetics-based micromixer with electrically conductive sidewalls, where the electric field is in the transverse direction of the flow and parallel to the conductivity gradient at the interface between two fluids to be mixed. Mixing results are first compared with another widely studied micromixer configuration, where electrodes are located at the inlet and outlet of the channel with electric field parallel to bulk flow direction but orthogonal to the conductivity gradient at the interface between the two fluids to be mixed. Faster mixing is achieved in the micromixer with conductive sidewalls. Effects of Re numbers, applied AC voltage and frequency, and conductivity ratio of the two fluids to be mixed on mixing results were investigated. The results reveal that the mixing length becomes shorter with low Re number and mixing with increased voltage and decreased frequency. Higher conductivity ratio leads to stronger mixing result. It was also found that, under low conductivity ratio, compared with the case where electrodes are located at the end of the channel, the conductive sidewalls can generate fast mixing at much lower voltage, higher frequency, and lower conductivity ratio. The study of this micromixer could broaden our understanding of electrokinetic phenomena and provide new tools for sample preparation in applications such as organ-on-a-chip where fast mixing is required. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8777699 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-87776992022-01-22 Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls Yang, Fang Zhao, Wei Kuang, Cuifang Wang, Guiren Micromachines (Basel) Article We report a quasi T-channel electrokinetics-based micromixer with electrically conductive sidewalls, where the electric field is in the transverse direction of the flow and parallel to the conductivity gradient at the interface between two fluids to be mixed. Mixing results are first compared with another widely studied micromixer configuration, where electrodes are located at the inlet and outlet of the channel with electric field parallel to bulk flow direction but orthogonal to the conductivity gradient at the interface between the two fluids to be mixed. Faster mixing is achieved in the micromixer with conductive sidewalls. Effects of Re numbers, applied AC voltage and frequency, and conductivity ratio of the two fluids to be mixed on mixing results were investigated. The results reveal that the mixing length becomes shorter with low Re number and mixing with increased voltage and decreased frequency. Higher conductivity ratio leads to stronger mixing result. It was also found that, under low conductivity ratio, compared with the case where electrodes are located at the end of the channel, the conductive sidewalls can generate fast mixing at much lower voltage, higher frequency, and lower conductivity ratio. The study of this micromixer could broaden our understanding of electrokinetic phenomena and provide new tools for sample preparation in applications such as organ-on-a-chip where fast mixing is required. MDPI 2021-12-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8777699/ /pubmed/35056199 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13010034 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Article Yang, Fang Zhao, Wei Kuang, Cuifang Wang, Guiren Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls |
title | Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls |
title_full | Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls |
title_fullStr | Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls |
title_full_unstemmed | Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls |
title_short | Rapid AC Electrokinetic Micromixer with Electrically Conductive Sidewalls |
title_sort | rapid ac electrokinetic micromixer with electrically conductive sidewalls |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8777699/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35056199 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/mi13010034 |
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