AN ACTIVE CHAOTIC MICROMIXER INTEGRATING THERMAL ACTUATION ASSOCIATING PDMS AND SILICON MICROTECHNOLOGY

Olivier Français , Marie-Caroline Jullien (1) , L. Rousseau (2) , P. Poulichet (2) , Serge Desportes (3) , Assia Chouai (3) , Jean-Pierre Lefèvre (3) , Jacques Delaire (3)

1 SATIE - Systèmes et Applications des Technologies de l'Information et de l'Energie
2 ESYCOM - Electronique, Systèmes de communication et Microsystèmes
3 PPSM - Laboratoire de Photophysique et Photochimie Supramoléculaires et Macromoléculaires

Due to scaling laws, in microfluidic, flows are laminar. Consequently, mixing between two liquids is mainly obtained by natural diffusion which may take a long time or equivalently requires centimetre length channels. To reduce time and length for mixing, it is possible to generate chaotic-like flows either by modifying the channel geometry or by creating an external perturbation of the flow. In this paper, an active micromixer is presented consisting on thermal actuation with heating resistors. In order to disturb the liquid flow, an oscillating transverse flow is generated by heating the liquid. Depending on the value of boiling point, either bubble expansion or volumetric dilation controlled the transverse flow amplitude. A chaotic like mixing is then induced under particular conditions depending on volume expansion, liquid velocity, frequency of actuation... This solution presents the advantage to achieve mixing in a very short time (1s) and along a short channel distance (channel width). It can also be integrated in a more complex device due to actuator integration with microfluidics.

Mots clés: Active micromixer; PDMS; Microheater; Chaotic effects; Microfluidic

Domaines: Architectures Matérielles [cs.AR]

Olivier Français, Marie-Caroline Jullien, L. Rousseau, P. Poulichet, Serge Desportes, et al.. AN ACTIVE CHAOTIC MICROMIXER INTEGRATING THERMAL ACTUATION ASSOCIATING PDMS AND SILICON MICROTECHNOLOGY. DTIP 2006, Apr 2006, Stresa, Lago Maggiore, Italy. 6 p. ⟨hal-00189321⟩