High Efficiency Mixing Chip with Liquid Flow Actuators Operated by Surface Acoustic Waves

Abstract

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices can be used as component parts for micro total analysis systems (μTASs), because the structures of these are very simple. We thus fabricated a mixing chip with liquid flow actuators operated only by the SAWs. The chip is mainly consisted of one Y-type flow channel, two pumps and one mixer. The pump is located at each upstream area of merging point of the flow channel, and the mixer is located at its downstream area. Incidentally, the flow actuators have interdigital transducers (IDTs) to generate the SAWs. The IDTs were fabricated by patterning Al/Cr on a LiNbO₃ substrate, and the flow channel wall was made of epoxy-based negative resist SU-8. Using the mixing chip, we carried out a mixing experiment of two water solutions with different concentrations by using glycerin, and a chemical reaction experiment of luminol luminescence. Through the experimentations, it was found that the local and rapid mixing of continuous liquid flow was possible by using the SAW actuators, and the availability of our fabricated mixing chip as a reactor was demonstrated.