Effect of Excitation Waveforms on Biomimetic Cilia-Based Micromixing

This article presents the effect of excitation waveforms on the rate of micromixing evaluated using biomimetic cilia-based microfluidic devices (soft cantilever-type, vibrating devices that are excited by the oscillations of the piezoactuator with different trajectories). The main contribution of this article is to experimentally evaluate the mixing excited by different waveforms and to report that (i) the mixing time is significantly decreased through employing the cilia when compared to the case without employing the cilia; (ii) the mixing time in case of employing the cilia is additionally decreased through the application of the symmetric triangular waveform with sharper turnarounds when compared to the case of the symmetric sinusoidal waveform (with smoother turnarounds); (iii) furthermore, the mixing time in case of employing the cilia is reduced further through applying asymmetric excitation waveforms with greater asymmetry when compared to the case of applying asymmetric excitation waveforms with less asymmetry.