A combinatorial approach to microfluidic mixing

A new computational approach to the modeling and design of efficient microfluidic mixers is demonstrated. The mixers created provide far more rapid mixing than previous designs. A set of mixer components is created and mapped using a traditional Navier–Stokes fluid solver. The maps are used to quickly model the effect each component has on the lateral distribution of species in the channel. For a mixer of a given length, all the possible combinations of components can be evaluated, and the best mixer for a given metric can be found. Although the mixers presented in this study are short (length-to-width ratios below 8), they show degrees of mixing comparable to much longer mixers found in the literature.