MEMS mixer as an example of a novel construction method of microfluidics by discrete microparts

This paper describes a novel approach to construct and/or functionalize a microfluidic chip with discrete microparts which are microfabricated enough small to place them in a microchannel. Preliminary demonstration was shown as a passive mixer. Microparts of several hundreds micrometers, were fabricated by double sides etching with ICP RIE. The parts were manually placed in a typical Y-shape PDMS microchannel. Fluorescence observation reveals that the constructed microfluidics has the same mixing ability as a fully silicon MEMS mixer. The configuration that is unable by the normal preassembled structure can be also fabricated.