Experimental and numerical study on a planar passive micromixer with semicircle mixing elements

Micromixer has drew much attention in recent years. In this paper, based on perturbation and stretching to the stream, a novel planar passive micromixer with 8 semicircle mixing elements was presented. This micromixer was fabricated with PDMS replication process and evaluated experimentally and numerically. Mixing experiments were performed using Rhodamine B solution (0.0025mol·l-1) and DI water to evaluate the efficiency. Experiments from Re=0.08 to Re=40 were carried out and 2D numerical model was built by COMSOL Multiphysics under same conditions, which have highly agreed with experiments. Its efficiency can reach 90% both at Re<;0.1 and Re>;10, much more efficient than T-shaped mixer at the same conditions. Due to planar structure, it can be easily realized and integrated to microfluidic systems.