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A three-dimensional double-helical structure microfluidic chip with efficient mixing

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Abstract

In recent years, the mechanism based on changing the cross-sectional shape of long and straight channels for increasing mixing efficiency has reached a bottleneck, while the vortex effect brought by curved channels has become a hot topic in current mixer research. The vortex effect should be fully utilized in the mixing process. Inspired by the spiral structure as well as splitting and reorganization, a passive three-dimensional double-helical structure micro-mixer was proposed. It is printed by FDM (fused deposition) technology. First, a model of the double-helix structure was printed with HIPS (high impact polystyrene) material, which was supported by PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) material. The mixing experiments showed that the three-dimensional (3D) double-helix structure could increase the mixing efficiency to 90.6%, while the mixing efficiency of the conventional two-dimensional (2D) T-shaped structure was only 78.5%. In this paper, the effects of the number of turns, pitch, diameter, staggering angle, and flow rate on the mixing effect are compared separately. The results show that the change of staggering angle has a better effect on the improvement of mixing efficiency.

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Funding

This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51505077), Project Agreement for Science and Technology Development of Jilin Province (JJKH20200105KJ), and the Science and Technology Innovation Development Project of Jilin City (201750230, 20166013, 20166012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jilin, China

    Hanbo Yang, Gang Li, Huan Liu, Hongxu Pan, **gran Quan, Yansong Chen, Jianxin Xu, Yahao Liu, Lixiang Li & Junyao Wang

Authors
  1. Hanbo Yang
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  2. Gang Li
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  3. Huan Liu
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  4. Hongxu Pan
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  5. **gran Quan
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  6. Yansong Chen
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  7. Jianxin Xu
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  8. Yahao Liu
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  9. Lixiang Li
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  10. Junyao Wang
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Contributions

Liu Huan mainly revised the manuscript, which was reviewed by all the authors.

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Correspondence to Junyao Wang.

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Yang, H., Li, G., Liu, H. et al. A three-dimensional double-helical structure microfluidic chip with efficient mixing. Microfluid Nanofluid 27, 48 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-023-02658-z

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