Design and simulation of a electroosmotic micromixer for mixing of biological fluids in microfluidic devices

Transport and mixing of minute amounts of biological fluids are significantly important in lab-on-a-chip devices. In this paper, biological fluids with different concentrations are considered and is simulated electroosmotic mixer and performs the mixing operation. Among many microfluidic mixers, electro-osmotic flow mixers have been widely studied and applied due to their advantages such as simple structure, convenient control and remarkable mixing effect. The mixing process of fluid in the electro-osmotic flow micromixer is simulated, and the flow characteristics of fluid in the micromixer are analyzed. The analysis shows that the electroosmotic flow micromixer generates electroosmotic flow under the action of alternating electric field, and disturbs the fluid to form vortex, thus greatly improving the mixing efficiency. The results show that the micromixing efficiency increases with the increase of zeta potential and applied alternating electric field potential.