The working principle of static mixers is based on repeated stretching, cutting, and stacking operations. Two‐way splitting (cutting) elements are most commonly used. Multiple splitting elements increase the compactness of the mixer, but an issue is the pressure consumption. Here we first investigate how to improve existing two way splitting and recombining flows. We use the serpentine channel geometry which relevance is that it is easy to fabricate on the interface between two halves of a mold or device. Next a parallel multiple splitting method is developed which is compact and efficient in terms of pressure consumption and uniformity of the resulting layer distribution. The final design represents a fully parallel multiple mixer, circularly shaped, that uses fan shaped channels (for a uniform flow length distribution) to guide the flow to its splitting channels, where it is turned and recollected in a second fan shaped channel. Because of its twelve‐way parallel splitting design, the device produces 24 layers in one mixing element and 288 layers in the second element and so on. Prototypes are fabricated, tested on performance, and compared with some existing static mixers using mixing speed, volume, length, and pressure drop as criteria. The new mixer outperforms the other designs, with an exception of the volume used. magnified image
Microfluidic devices as used, e.g., in lab‐on‐a‐chip and micro‐total‐analysis systems, are frequently fabricated using silicon or polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)‐based technologies, both with their known disadvantages. Here, we design a fully polymeric, multifunctional microfluidic reactor device, using an alternative fabrication method, the two‐component co‐injection moulding technology, in which different polymer combinations—generally a flexible and a rigid thermoplastic polymer—can be applied. The prototype device is based on an ambi‐symmetrical design, combining two identical shells, that are each folded to occupy a 160 × 90 mm2 space and subsequently stacked into a 4 (double) layer system. One microfluidic reactor unit includes six different in‐ and output connections, six peristaltic pumps (built up from three membranes each), eighteen volume‐neutral, recoverable control valves, two fluid storages, and two efficient, flow splitting, rotating and recombining, serpentine mixers. The mixers realize an almost perfect baker's transformation and possess ten elements that create 2 × 410 layers with an individual striation thickness of 0.5 nm in 10 s. The total reactor volume amounts 7 mL. The capacity of the peristaltic pumps, with their stroke of 0.5 mm, equals about 35 µL · s−1 at an actuation frequency of 5 Hz. Actuation occurs by air pressure. One microfluidic device can be endlessly connected to its replicas.
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