AC Electroosmotic Mixing Using Sinusoidally Shaped Electrodes: Applications to Synthesis of Organic Nanoparticles

Abstract

Mixing of laminar flows in microfluidic devices is an essential step for chemical synthesis and biochemical assays. While many passive and active techniques exist for fluid mixing in microfluidic chips, electrokinetic methods such as AC Electroosmosis (ACEO) remain an indispensable tool due to simplicity and ease of electrode implementation and operation and lack of any moving parts. In this work, we present an ACEO-based micromixer consisting of sinusoidally shaped three-finger electrodes. Furthermore, for the first time, we demonstrate the feasibility of our electrokinetic mixer for applications in organic nanoparticle synthesis that can provide much higher throughput compared to conventional flow-focusing microfluidics for the synthesis of nanoparticles.