There can be turbulence in microfluidics at low Reynolds number

G. R. Wang; Fang Yang; Wei Zhao

doi:10.1039/C3LC51403J

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There can be turbulence in microfluidics at low Reynolds number

G. R. Wang,*^ab Fang Yang †^a and Wei Zhao †^a

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* Corresponding authors

^a Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA
E-mail: guirenwang@sc.edu

^b Biomedical Engineering Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA

Abstract

Turbulence is commonly viewed as a type of macroflow, where the Reynolds number (Re) has to be sufficiently high. In microfluidics, when Re is below or on the order of 1 and fast mixing is required, so far only chaotic flow has been reported to enhance mixing based on previous publications since turbulence is believed not to be possible to generate in such a low Re microflow. There is even a lack of velocimeter that can measure turbulence in microchannels. In this work, we report a direct observation of the existence of turbulence in microfluidics with Re on the order of 1 in a pressure driven flow under electrokinetic forcing using a novel velocimeter having ultrahigh spatiotemporal resolution. The work could provide a new method to control flow and transport phenomena in lab-on-a-chip and a new perspective on turbulence.

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Article information

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/C3LC51403J
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 18 Dec 2013
Accepted: 23 Jan 2014
First published: 23 Jan 2014

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Lab Chip, 2014,14, 1452-1458

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There can be turbulence in microfluidics at low Reynolds number

G. R. Wang, F. Yang and W. Zhao, Lab Chip, 2014, 14, 1452 DOI: 10.1039/C3LC51403J

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There can be turbulence in microfluidics at low Reynolds number

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