Modelling of electrokinetically driven mixing flow in microchannels with patterned blocks

Mixing in microchannels is an important process since certain microfluidic applications require the rapid mixing of species. This paper investigates the mixing in microchannels via the simulation of two-dimensional electrokinetically driven flow where the microchannel is populated with patterned blocks. The effects of the number, the size and the displacement of blocks are analysed to determine the efficiency of the mixing. The fluid flow is simulated via the single relaxation time lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) with a forcing term from the electric field. The concentration of species within the channel is governed by an advection–diffusion equation with Peclet number of the order 1000.