Numerical and experimental observation of chaotic mixing in microfluidic mixer

Both the chaotic mixers (Fig.1) adopt a two-layer overlapping channels structure, which is very efficient for fluid manipulations such as stretching and folding, splitting and recombination. Even at extremely low Re (~10), chaotic advection can be generated. Both particle tracing simulation (Fig. 2) and experimental results (Fig.3) show that as the fluids are driven through the mixer, striations occur resulting in large interface area to promote diffusive mixing. Fig. 1. Schematic of the chaotic mixer structure. Model A (left) and B (right).