Application of vorticella’s feeding mechanism as a micromixer

The microorganism, vorticella, of about 50 mum in diameter was found to be capable of mixing beads in microfluidic channel by energizing vortex with its cilia. Vortex generation and flow velocity around the cell body of a vorticella was experimentally studied using both fluorescents and non-fluorescents microbeads of different size (from 0.5 to 20 mum in diameter). Two vortices in two-dimensional flow (single vortex in three-dimensional space) with a diameter of around 400 mum were observed. An average flow rate of 200 mum/s was measured between the centers of the vortex. The induced flow was also found to be powerful enough to move 20-mum beads. We integrated vorticella and microchannel successfully.