A State-of-the-Art Review of Mixing in Microfluidic Mixers

1
INTRODUCTION
The increasing demands of process industry,
pharmacy, analysis and biochemistry, for novel and
effective mixing technologies as well as the smooth
execution of highly exothermic or explosive chemical
reactions have led to the intensive development of the
microreaction technologies, and resulted recent years
in a considerable variety of microfluidic systems. The
term of microfluidic systems refers to systems with
characteristic length scales that are in the micrometer
range. A tangible effect of this small dimension is that
fluid properties become increasingly controlled by
viscous forces rather than inertia [1]. On the other
hand, the reduced dimensions of the microfluidic sys-
tem lead to a large surface-to-volume ratio, which in-
creases heat and mass transfer efficiencies. The small
dimensions allow rapid diffusive mixing to occur in as
little as 100 ȝs. These lamellar systems achieve
surface-to-volume ratios of 30000 m2·mˉ
3, compared
to batch reactors with typical surface-to-volume ratios
of 4 m2·mˉ
3. In addition, temperature changes and
heat transfer coefficients up to 25 kW·mˉ
2·Kˉ
1 are
possible depending on the materials and heat ex-
changer used [2]. High heat transfer efficiency allows
for fast heating and cooling of reaction mixtures
within the micromixers whereby reaction under iso-
thermal conditions with exactly defined residence time
can be carried out [3].