Enhancing micromixing using external electric and magnetic fields

Microfluidic mixing techniques have gained significant interest for their immense potential in the fields of medical diagnostics, food processing, and biochemical engineering. This study presents a novel Y-micromixer and conducts an analysis of the mixing process between ferrofluid and water based on the electrokinetic and magnetofluidic transport phenomena. By introducing zeta potential patches, the instability is increased, leading to improved mixing. In addition, the strategic placement of neodymium micromagnets in close proximity to the microchannel is found to be highly advantageous. Our work utilizes finite element simulation to investigate the impact of magnet distance and the number of magnets on mixing efficiency in the microchannel. This study also investigates the influence of the magnitude of zeta potential of the patches on the efficiency of mixing. A noteworthy observation is that increasing the number of micromagnets positioned at a certain distance from each other and closer to the microchannel, in combination with the zeta potential patches, resulted in a substantial improvement in the mixing index. The utilization of micromagnets and zeta potential patches to improve mixing without the requirement of an extended channel length will be highly advantageous to the scientific community.