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In this article numerical simulation of electroosmotic flow in heterogeneous microchannel is performed using approximate model of Helmholtz-Smoluchowski in which the effect of electric field on the fluid flow is applied through a slip boundary condition. Solving the concentration equation, the mixing performance of microchannels with heterogeneous zeta-potential is studied both qualitatively and quantitatively. This study shows that combining the electroosmotic and pressure-driven flows in a single microchannel with proper arrangement of the heterogeneities can easily lead to design of electroosmotic micromixers with adjustable mixing performance. The mixing behavior of such micromixers is dominated by the arrangement of zeta-potential distribution as well as the applied external pressure drop. In this article we introduced relative mixing performance and mixing capacity rather than well-discussed factor of mixing performance in order to perform a thorough analysis of mixing. Using these factors, it is found that presence of heterogeneities has a small augmentation on mixing performance when the pressure drop is extremely small or large. Therefore, performance of micromixers with combined flow of electroosmotic and pressure-driven has an optimum point. Furthermore, it is seen that asymmetric level of the charge pattern is more effective on the mixing performance compared to absolute values of wall charges. This promises proper mixing even when surfaces with moderate zeta-potential are used in micromixer.

Keywords: Micromixer, Electroosmotic Pressure-driven Flow, Helmholtz-Smoluchowski Model, Non-homogenous charge pattern

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