A lamination micromixier using silicon DRIE technology

This paper reports a design, fabrication, and experimental results of a lamination micromixer with a newly added middle partition plate for efficient mixing. The lamination mixer was simply fabricated in a silicon wafer by double side DRIE processes and combination masks of silicon dioxide and photoresist. The mixing chip contained 10 steps lamination mixer which split a solution to upper and lower sub-channels and join together. By repeating this operation, the thickness of the flow layers became thinner. We have successfully improved mixing efficiency of different volume ratio (1:10 mixing) as well as same volume ratio employing to the partition plate in the middle of micro channel. In addition to this, we can handle up to 200 μl/min flow rate by the fabricated partition plate with 365 μm in length. The lamination micromixer can be integrated with micro heater, thermal sensor, and temperature control circuits using silicon LSI-MEMS technology.