Diffusion and Mixing in Microchannel Analyzed by the Luminol Chemiluminescence

This study focused on the diffusion and mixing phenomena investigated by using luminol chemiluminescence (CL) to estimate the local chemical reaction rate in the T-junction microchannel. Generally, the degree of mixing in microchannel is calculated by the deviation of the obtained concentration profiles from the uniform concentration profile by using fluorescence technique. Thus, the degree of mixing is a macroscopic estimate for the whole microchannel, which is inappropriate for understanding the diffusion and mixing phenomena in the mixing layer. In this study, the luminol CL reaction is applied to visualize the local chemical reaction and to estimate the local diffusion and mixing phenomena at an interface between two liquids in microchannel. Luminol emits blue chemiluminescence when it reacts with the hydrogen peroxide at the mixing layer. Experiments were carried out on the T-junction microchannel with 200 microns in width and 50 microns in depth casted in the PDMS chip. The chemiluminescence intensity profiles clearly show the mixing layer at an interface between two liquids. The experimental results are compared with the results of numerical simulation that involves solving the mass transport equations including the chemical reaction term. By calibrating CL intensity to the chemical reaction rate estimated by the numerical simulation, the local chemical reaction profile can be quantitatively estimated from the CL intensity profile.