Design and Analysis of a Chaotic Micromixer with Vortices Modulation

A novel design for vortex modulation of a passive chaotic micromixer, named a circulation-disturbance micromixer (CDM), has been achieved and analyzed experimentally and numerically. The systematic numerical analyses - topological flow characteristics and particle tracking method - have been developed, that enable visualization of detailed mixing patterns. To display the cross section of mixing region of flows in our CDM, the biotin-streptavidin binding is detected through the fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) pair of fluorescent proteins - R-phycoerythrin (RPE) and cross-linked allophycocyanin (clAPC). We expect the diagnosis technique using FRET will be successfully applied to biochemical analysis in microfluidic system.