The ability to mix fluids at microscale is valuable to a variety of industries, such as the food, biological, pharmaceutical, and chemical industries. One area of development in microscale fluidic mixing is with microfluidic mixing devices. Microfluidic mixing devices are used within these industries for purposes such as biomedical diagnostics, drug development, DNA replication, and so on. Microfluidic mixing devices provide miniaturized environments that facilitate the mixing of very small sample volumes. Microfabrication techniques enable the fabrication of small-scale microfluidic mixing devices on a chip. Enhancing the efficiency of such microfluidic mixing devices is beneficial for increasing the throughput and reducing the cost of various microfluidic systems, such as lab-on-chip systems. Accordingly, efforts to improve the mixing performance and reduce the size of microfluidic mixing devices are ongoing.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds