Optimized High-Aspect-Ratio Diffusional Micromixers

This part of our work has been aimed at designing, manufacturing and characterizing effective micro-mixers which are cheap, durable and easily integrated on a variety of bio-chips with emphasis on those performing Polymerese Chain Reactions (PCR) and Ligase Detection Reactions (LDR). A key contribution is the development of an optimization procedure for the design of passive micro-mixers utilizing high-aspect-ratio micro-channels (HARMC). The optimization procedure identifies the optimum type of mixer on the basis of the flow rate proportions of the mixture constituents and provides for two optimum designs of the selected mixer type for an aspect ratio of choice in two ways: (a) for specified mixture volume and mixer pressure drop the optimum mixer dimensions and operating condition minimize the total production time and (b) for specified mixture volume and a total production time the optimum mixer dimensions and operating condition minimize the mixer pressure drop. The simplest and easiest to manufacture layout of an optimized mixer configuration (X2JC) with two inlet ports and three layers is shown in Figure 1. The injection of compound 1 into the compound 2 main stream is performed through two side-jets in a wider channel to further reduce the pressure loss overhead followed by a contraction into the main mixing channel.