Applications of micromixing technology

Abstract

This review presents an application of micromixer technologies, which have driven a number of critical research trends over the past few decades, particularly for chemical and biological fields. Micromixer technologies in this review are categorized according to their applications: (1) chemical applications, including chemical synthesis, polymerization, and extraction; (2) biological applications, including DNA analysis, biological screening enzyme assays, protein folding; and (3) detection/analysis of chemical or biochemical content combined with NMR, FTIR, or Raman spectroscopies. In the chemical application, crystallization, extraction, polymerization, and organic synthesis have been reported, not only for laboratory studies, but also for industrial applications. Microscale techniques are used in chemical synthesis to develop microreactors. In clinical medicine and biological studies, microfluidic systems have been widely applied to the identification of biochemical products, diagnosis, drug discovery, and investigation of disease symptoms. The biological and biochemical applications also include enzyme assays, biological screening assays, cell lysis, protein folding, and biological analytical assays. Nondestructive analytical/detection methods have yielded a number of benefits to chemical and biochemical processes. In this chapter, we introduce analytical methods those are frequently integrated into micromixing technologies, such as NMR, FT-IR, and Raman spectroscopies. From the study of micromixers, we discovered that the Re number and mixing time depends on the specific application, and we clustered micromixers in various applications according to the Re number and mixing performance (mixing time). We expect that this clustering will be helpful in designing of micromixers for specific applications.

Mixing Performance of a Serpentine Micromixer with Non-Aligned Inputs

“…In recent years, the micromixer has emerged as an essential topic for recognition of micro total analysis systems (μTAS) or lab-on-a-Chip devices [1,2]. Due to the tiny size (typically sub-millimeter) of a microfluidic device conventional methods used for stirring fluids are not suitable, thus rapid OPEN ACCESS mixing of fluids become very challenging.…”

Micro-mixer device with deep channels in silicon using modified RIE process: fabrication, packaging and characterization

“…The advantages that microfluidic devices hold are low consumption of fluid, reduced production of harmful by-products, precise temperature control, increased speed of reaction, reduced measurement times, portability, enhanced sensitivity etc. (Jeong et al 2010). Various reports related to applications of these lab-on-chip devices are mentioned in the literature (Jeong et al 2010;Nguyen and Wu 2005;Lo 2013).…”

Enhancement of Mixing Performance of Non-Newtonian Fluids using Curving and Grooving of Microchannels

“…The fluids flow in these processes cover wide range of Reynolds number. For example the velocity and Reynolds number in enzyme assay process are very small, whereas in some processes such as crystallization and polymerization are large (Jeong et al 2010). This study was performed for shear thinning fluids (n=0.49-1) at Reynolds numbers between 0.1-300.…”