The New Jersey Institute of Technology's
Electronic Theses & Dissertations Project

Title:	Computational and experimental determination of the mixing efficiency of a microfluidic serpentine micromixer
Author:	Arockiam, Siril
View Online:	njit-etd2017-132 (xi, 54 pages ~ 1.9 MB pdf)
Department:	Department of Chemical, Biological and Pharmaceutical Engineering
Degree:	Master of Science
Program:	Biopharmaceutical Engineering
Document Type:	Thesis
Advisory Committee:	Armenante, Piero M. (Committee chair) Basuray, S. (Committee member) Voronka, Roman Wolodymyr (Committee member)
Date:	2017-12
Keywords:	Microfluidics Microfluidic devices Mixing efficiency Microfluidic serpentine micromixer
Availability:	Unrestricted
Abstract:	In microfluidics, efficiency and mixing time are the greatest disadvantages. These parameters hinder the application of microfluidic devices for biochemical and immunological assays. However, once these disadvantages have been overcome by optimizing the parameters of the microfluidic device, it becomes the important analytical tool. In this experiment, various designs of microfluidic devices have been both simulated using COMSOL software, and experimentally verified to obtain the optimized parameter such as depth and velocity for better mixing efficiency. The COMSOL model has been validated by comparing the results with fluorescent images data of the experiment. The microfluidic device is built with Adhesive double-sided tape and glass slides. The microfluidic channels are 25µm in depth and 700µm in width. These channels have a serpentine design with three loops. It was been analyzed that by increasing the depth of the channel to 400µm at 0.1µl/min flow rate, 99.5% mixing efficiency was obtained. As both the contact area and time were increasing, which in turn lead to the increase in diffusion mixing between the two streams.