Enhanced microfluidic mixing using planar curved channel geometries

Mixing of fluids at the microscale poses a variety of challenges, many of which arise from the fact that diffusion is the only available mechanism to achieve mixing in the laminar flow regime. In this work, we demonstrate the use of microfluidic devices incorporating spiral and asymmetric serpentine geometries capable of achieving mixing levels comparable to those attained using chaotic advection, while retaining a planar format that can be fabricated using only a single lithography step and without the need for multilayer alignment.