An Economical and Efficient Method for the Fabrication of Spiral Micromixer

Abstract

Micromixers have been widely used due to its vast applications in biological, chemical, electronics, and mechanical fields. Micromachining through common fabrication methods is a challenging issue, therefore it is emerging as the latest research area. This work presents the rapid and cost-effective method of micromixer fabrication. It includes two steps of fabrication. Initially, a mold of spiral micromixer is fabricated on an aluminum workpiece using wire electrical discharge machining (Wire-EDM). In the Wire-EDM process, molybdenum wire of diameter 180 µm is used as a tool electrode. Pulse-on-time (Ton) of 15 µs, pulse-off-time (Toff) of 6 µs, peak current (IP) of 4 A and table feed (S) of 55.6 m/s are set as the cutting parameters. After machining the mold, in the second step final micromixer is fabricated using soft lithography technique with poly-di-methyl-siloxane (PDMS). It is confirmed by visualizing the flow inside the fabricated micromixer that a spiral micromixer may be used for mixing for various applications.