Numerical simulation of the efficiency of mixing in heterogeneous microchannels with patterned surfa

The mixing of samples in heterogeneous microchannels with a periodically stepwise surface potential was analyzed numerically using the control volume method. The equations describing the wall potential and external potential were solved first to get the distribution of wall potential and external potential, respectively, then the momentum equation was solved to get the developed flow field.Finally, the mass transport equation was solved to get the concentration field. The simulation results show that the distribution of samples at the inlet of the microchannel determines its theoretical value of concentration, therefore, the pattern of the distribution of samples at the inlet and its corresponding velocity can be changed to get the desirable concentration of solute. The heterogeneous wall potential almost has no effect on the mixing of samples in two-inlet microfluidic devices. For three-inlet microfluidic devices, the comprehensive ability of transportation and mixing has an optimization when the ratio of periodic length of wall potential to the height of the microchannel is about 4.88.The above conclusions are helpful to the optimization of the design of microfluidic devices.