Efficient Mixing in Milliseconds with Lab-on-a-Chip
9 May 2007Micronit Microfluidics (Enschede, the Netherlands) today introduced four glass microfluidic mixers enabling high-quality mixing of micro or nanoliters of fluids, in fractions of seconds. The micromixers extend the Micronit product and technology portfolio with new principles to perform microfluidics experiments.
The micromixers are part of the Micronit lab-on-a-chip technology platform. Lab-on-a-chip is the miniaturization of a laboratory to a small chip, enabling fluidic experiments on a microscale. When injecting different fluids into a microchip, the fluids are mixed more by diffusion than by convection. In Micronit’s mixerchips however, mixing is advanced promoted by the special mixer elements Micronit has integrated into the microchips.
Key features of the Micronit micromixers are the very short mixing times - down to milliseconds - and the ideally mixed conditions. The mixers enable fast and effective mixing, even at low pressures. They are based on two mixing principles developed by Micronit and The University of Sheffield: the “Tear-Drop” mixer, for use with low Reynolds number mixing and the “Swirl” mixer, for use with high Reynolds number mixing.
“The demand for efficient micromixers was the key driver for the research we performed on this technology,” said Marko Blom, R&D manager at Micronit and responsible for the micromixer development. “Although it is sometimes thought that the problem of mixing at small scales has been solved, still no easy-to-use passive micromixers exist that can easily be integrated into a microfluidic chip. The introduction of the Micronit standard glass micromixers is a step forward in the application of micromixing in life sciences and chemistry. The use of glass makes the micromixer optically clear and suitable for aggressive chemicals.”
The micromixers are available in four options, and can be combined with a lab-on-a-chip kit. This ‘LOAC Micromixer Kit’ enables to create a complete micromixer set-up for immediate start of micromixing experiments.