Abstract
Acoustic micromixers have attracted considerable attention in the last years since they can deliver high mixing efficiencies without the need for movable components. However, their adoption in the academic and industrial microfluidics community has been limited, possibly due to the reduced flexibility and accessibility of previous designs since most of them are application-specific and fabricated with techniques that are expensive, not widely available and difficult to integrate with other manufacturing technologies. In this work, we describe a simple, yet highly versatile, bubble-based micromixer module fabricated with a combination of low-cost rapid prototyping techniques. The hybrid approach enables the integration of the module into practically any substrate and the individual control of multiple micromixers embedded within the same monolithic chip. The module can operate under static and continuous flow conditions showing enhanced mixing capabilities compared to similar devices. We show that the system is capable of performing cell-free DNA extractions from small volumes of blood plasma (≤500 μl) with up to a ten-fold increase in capture efficiency when compared to control methods.
Highlights
Micromixers are essential components in microfluidic devices which have a direct impact on the efficiency and sensitivity of assays.[1]
A video demonstrating this process can be found in the Electronic supplementary information (ESI).† The main resonant frequency for all the fabricated micromixers was 4.2 ± 0.5 kHz
We have developed a novel bubble-based acoustic micromixer based on hybrid manufacturing
Summary
Micromixers are essential components in microfluidic devices which have a direct impact on the efficiency and sensitivity of assays.[1]. A surprisingly simple, yet powerful concept, is the acoustic actuation of air bubbles trapped within miniaturised devices. This method has been posed to be the “holy grail” for achieving fast (down to milliseconds) convective mixing at microscale lengths.[12] In contrast to mechanical mixers, the microstreaming flow generated by the oscillating bubbles can be driven well beyond the Stokes boundary layer, producing efficient mixing even when dealing with highly viscous fluids.[13] the actuators for this kind of micromixers are generally economical, low-power and have a reduced footprint
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