Grooved Serpentine Microchannels Mixing Optimization

The performance of micromixers based on serpentine microchannels with grooved surfaces is optimized using computational fluid dynamics to explore their mixing quality performance in terms of their geometrical parameters. This particular topology for mixing fluids on the microscale, exploits the overlap between transversal helical flows induced by slanted groove-ridge patterns with respect to the direction of the flow and the typical Dean flows induced in curved channels by centrifugal forces. Even in the low Reynolds number regime the resulting flows are complex with multiple vortices that lead to enhanced mixing.