Microfluidic flow-through chambers for higher performance

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the effect of the different geometries on the velocity distributions in flow-through microchambers. The chambers are filled with magnetic nanopar-ticles and continuous flow is applied in them. Our goal was to find a good and simple geometry to ensure that the flow-through times, therefore the reaction times at most of the laminar flow lines are similar in the chamber. The homogeneity of the velocity field is also desired. For the investigations we performed CFD simulations. A simple method for the reaction time calculation is presented. New geometries are simulated and compared with the original chamber shape used in our previous experiments. The results are promising, in the new geometries the reaction time distribution in the middle of the chamber as well as the velocity field is more homogeneous than in the original case. The simulations were done with the help of the open source CFD software OpenFOAM. Based on the simulation results new microfluidic structures were designed for the further experiments with the magnetic nanoparticles.