Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-018-2041-9

RESEARCH PAPER

Inertia‑driven enhancement of mixing efficiency in microfluidic

cross‑junctions: a combined Eulerian/Lagrangian approach
Alessia Borgogna1 · Maria Anna Murmura1 · Maria Cristina Annesini1 · Massimiliano Giona1 · Stefano Cerbelli1 

Received: 15 October 2017 / Accepted: 18 January 2018 / Published online: 29 January 2018
© Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2018

Abstract
Mixing of a diffusing species entrained in a three-dimensional microfluidic flow-focusing cross-junction is numerically
investigated at low Reynolds numbers, 1 ≤ Re ≤ 150 , for a value of the Schmidt number representative of a small solute
molecule in water, Sc = 103 . Accurate three-dimensional simulations of the steady-state incompressible Navier–Stokes equa-
tions confirm recent results reported in the literature highlighting the occurrence of different qualitative structures of the
flow geometry, whose range of existence depends on Re and on the ratio, R, between the volumetric flowrates of the imping-
ing currents. At low values of R and increasing Re, the flux tube enclosing the solute-rich stream undergoes a topological
transition, from the classical flow-focused structure to a multi-branched shape. We here show that this transition causes a
nonmonotonic behavior of mixing efficiency with Re at constant flow ratio. The increase in efficiency is the consequence
of a progressive compression of the cross-sectional diffusional lengthscale, which provides the mechanism sustaining the
transversal Fickian flux even when the Peclet number, Pe = Re Sc , characterizing mass transport, becomes higher due to
the increase in Re. The quantitative assessment of mixing efficiency at the considerably high values of the Peclet number
considered ( 103 ≤ Pe ≤ 1.5 × 105 ) is here made possible by a novel method of reconstruction of steady-state cross-sectional
concentration maps from velocity-weighted ensemble statistics of noisy trajectories, which does away with the severe numeri-
cal diffusion shortcomings associated with classical Eulerian approaches to mass transport in complex 3d flows.

Keywords  X-Junction · Mixing efficiency · Flux tube · Diffusion · Numerical diffusion · Langevin equation · Concentration
variance

1 Introduction

Microfluidics-assisted mixers have attracted ever growing

Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this attention in the last two decades in view of their potential to
article (https​://doi.org/10.1007/s1040​4-018-2041-9) contains achieve rapid contact between segregated liquid streams at
supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. lengthscales where flow and temperature conditions can be
accurately controlled (Hessel et al. 2005; Zhu and Ye 2010;
* Stefano Cerbelli
stefano.cerbelli@uniroma1.it Liu et al. 2012). Owing to the reduced lengthscales, these
devices are typically operated in the laminar fluid dynamic
Alessia Borgogna
alessia.borgogna@uniroma1.it regime, often under strictly creeping (Stokes) flow condi-
tions. In several applications (Stremler et al. 2004), geom-
Maria Anna Murmura
mariaanna.murmura@uniroma1.it etries and operating conditions of continuous inflow–outflow
micromixers have been inspired by the principles of chaotic
Maria Cristina Annesini
mariacristina.annesini@uniroma1.it advection, originally developed in the framework of tran-
sient processes occurring in closed impermeable systems
Massimiliano Giona
massimiliano.giona@uniroma1.it (Aref et al. 2014; Gubanov and Cortelezzi 2010). Microflu-
idic implementations of these principles have been proved to
1
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Chimica Materiali Ambiente, increase the efficiency of a number of clinical applications
Sapienza Università di Roma, Via Eudossiana 18, Rome,
Italy

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Page 2 of 15
(see, e.g., Cortelezzi et al. 2017; Raynal et al. 2007, 2013;
Leung et al. 2015).
However efficient, laminar chaos is not always straight-
forwardly attainable in open flow devices, and sometimes
is not even desirable in that the repeated stretching and
folding of the partially mixed structures typically generates
highly nonuniform micromixing intensities throughout the
mixing domain (Cerbelli et al. 2002). This is the case, e.g.,
of microfluidics-assisted flash nanoprecipitation of poly-
mers by solvent displacement (Saad and Prudhomme 2016;
Chronopoulou et al. 2014), where nonuniform mixing may
result in a wide size distribution of polymeric nanoparti-
cles. Here simplicity and flow uniformity is favored over
mixing efficiency, and elementary flow-focusing geometries
such as T-, Y-, and X-shaped junctions have been considered
(Zhao et al. 2011). It has been found that narrow distribu-
tions of particle size can be obtained in accurately tuned
flow regimes, where the average particle diameter can reach
values as low as 20 nm (Chronopoulou et al. 2014). Another
example of how the strict control over the flow features can
yield practical advantages is provided by polymer reaction
engineering. Here, an accurate design of the device geom-
etry not only permits the fine regulation of specific product
features (e.g., the molecular weight distribution), but also
can orient and direct the reaction pathways so as to obtain a
prescribed chemical composition along the polymeric chain
(Bally et al. 2011).
For these reasons, detailed numerical studies addressing
both the steady-state flow structure and its stability under
small perturbations have been performed in different micro-
mixer geometries (see, e.g., Lashgari et al. 2014; Oliveira
et al. 2012; Sousa et al. 2011; Chen et al. 2015) typically
characterized by a rectangular cross section.
As regards the specific case of the T-junction geometry,
extensive research effort has been put forward by Mauri
and co-workers, who analyzed different phenomenological
aspects of transport, ranging from the fluid dynamic char-
acterization of the flow features (Andreussi et al. 2015)—
including the effects of composition-dependent viscosity and
density (Orsi et al. 2013)— to the impact of the flow struc-
ture on mixing of a diffusive species entrained in one of the
feeding streams (Galletti et al. 2015). In trying to establish
a connection between flow features and mixing efficiency,
attention has been mainly focused on the structure of the
vorticity field, often invoking the formal analogy between
mass and vorticity transport equations. However, there are
fundamental differences between the solutions to these equa-
tions when a real world experiment involving liquid mix-
ing is being dealt with: (1) molecular (diffusive) transport
of vorticity is controlled by the factor Re−1 , which is typi-
cally of order 10−2 or higher in microfluidic applications,
whereas the coefficient controlling mass diffusion is given
by Pe−1 = (Re Sc)−1 where Sc ≃ 103 or higher for a solute in
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Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20
a liquid mixture, thus yielding Pe−1 ≤ 10−5 (2) the bound-
ary conditions for mass and vorticy transport are different
in the vast majority of the boundary value problems that are
meant to represent a physical experiment, and (3) in a three-
dimensional setting the full vector character of the vorticity
gives rise to the additional source (stretching) term 𝝎 ⋅ ∇𝐯
(where 𝝎 and 𝐯 represent the vorticity and the velocity vec-
tors, respectively) in the transport equation. Thus, if some
analogies can be expected in the two-dimensional setting
between scalar and vorticity transport, important differences
arise in the three-dimensional case.
By these observations, one surmises that, in open micro-
mixers operating at steady state, the connection between
flow structure and mixing efficiency should be not—in gen-
eral—directly inferred from the vorticity field, but rather
should be sought in the geometry of the flux tube associated
with the solute-rich stream entering the device. A step for-
ward in this direction has been taken only very recently by
Damian et al. (2017), who investigated both numerically and
experimentally the structure of such flux tube in a microflu-
idic cross-junction for a variety of operating conditions. A
detailed investigation of the partially mixed structures pre-
dicted by the numerical simulations and confirmed by the
experiments unveiled the occurrence of topologically differ-
ent features of the solute-rich stream, each characterized by
its own region of existence in the plane R−Re . The question
that arises from this interesting physical phenomenology,
ultimately associated with the increasing influence of flow
inertia at increasing values of Re, concerns the impact of
the different fluid dynamics regimes on advective-diffusive
transport of the solute, and, more specifically, how the geom-
etry of the flux tube affects the degree of mixing achieved.
In this article, we address this yet unanswered question
through a theoretical/numerical approach in a fully three-
dimensional setting. In this regard, the first problem to be
faced is that classical Eulerian approaches that accurately
solve the flow field cannot be expected equally accurate in
describing mass transport. This is because the high values
of Pe (compared to Re) that characterize mass transport in
liquid mixtures are typically associated with sharp boundary
layers of the concentration field, which require an exceed-
ingly fine discretization of the domain to be solved accu-
rately. To overcome this intrinsic limitation of a full Eulerian
solution of momentum and mass transport, we enforce a
mixed Eulerian–Lagrangian approach, where a commercial
software (COMSOL Multiphysics) is used to solve for the
Navier–Stokes equations and the resulting flow field is used
to define the deterministic motion component of a swarm
of advecting-diffusing particles entering the device at the
inlet of the solute-rich stream. The steady-state concentra-
tion field is computed based on the box-counted density of
the first intersection of these trajectories at a generic cross
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20 Page 3 of 15  20
section of the channel downstream the impinging region.
We provide theoretical arguments to show that a weighting
factor based on the streamwise velocity component must be
enforced to obtain the steady-state concentration cross-sec-
tional profile from the box-counted density of intersections.
2 Statement of the problem
2.1 System geometry and dimensionless
formulation of the problem
The geometric structure and the main operating parameters
of the cross-junction are sketched in Fig. 1.
The solute enters the device from the top cross section,
entrained in a solvent current of flowrate Q. A pure sol-
vent stream of flowrate Qw is split into two equal currents
symmetrically entering the cross-junction from the lateral
feeding sections. The inlet and outlet cross sections are all
squared and identical. The half-length of the square edge,
𝓁 , is taken as reference length. The right panel of the figure
shows the relevant dimensions of the geometry, defined with
respect to 𝓁 . The quantity Q∕Qw is henceforth referred to
as flow ratio R. Next, we choose the average flow velocity
U in the discharge channel (i.e., for z̃ ≥ 1 ) as a character-
istic velocity, and the concentration Cr of the solute in the
feeding stream as reference concentration. In principle, the
solutions of mass and momentum transport equations are
coupled because the density and viscosity of the mixture
depend on its composition, an occurrence that makes the
transport model strongly nonlinear even at low values of Re
and restricts the domain of numerical and theoretical inves-
tigation to a handful of simple prototypical cases (see, e.g,
Sadeghi 2018; Galletti et al. 2015) Besides, as discussed in
the remainder of this article, physically relevant effects of
the impact of flow inertia (i.e., quantified by values of Re
Fig. 1  Left panel: 3d geometry
and feeding condition. Right
panel: sketch of the device Q = R Qw
projection on the yz plane. All
lengths are made dimensionless
Qw /2
with respect to half of the edge (a)
length of the (squared) inlet and
outlet sections. The origin of
the coordinate system is located
at the center of the impinging
region
x
y
z
Qtot = (1 + R) Qw
significantly larger than unity) on mass transport and mixing
can be captured even in the modeling framework where the
mixture properties are assumed independent of composition.
Under this hypothesis the steady-state momentum and mass
transport equation for the dimensionless velocity 𝐯 and sol-
ute concentration c can be written in the one-way-coupling
form as
1 2
𝐯 ⋅ ∇𝐯 = ∇ 𝐯 − ∇P [∇ ⋅ 𝐯 = 0] (1)
Re
1 2
𝐯 ⋅ ∇c = ∇ c (2)
Pe
where Re = U𝓁∕𝜈 ( 𝜈 being the kinematic viscosity of the
mixture), and Pe = U𝓁∕ = Re Sc (  being the diffusiv-
ity of the solute in the mixture). In this context, by one-
way-coupling we mean that Eq. (1) can be regarded as stand
alone, and that mass transport can be solved ex-post once
the flow field 𝐯(𝐱) has been computed. As regards momen-
tum transport, no-slip and impermeability conditions are
assumed on all the solid surfaces of the microfluidic channel,
laminar inlet conditions associated with an entrance length
lin = 10 (thus giving rise to a fully developed Poiseuille
profile) are enforced on all the inlet sections, whereas con-
stant discharge pressure is assumed at the outlet section. As
concerns the local mass balance, Eq. (2), unit concentration
is enforced at the top cross section, where the solute-rich
stream enters the device, vanishing concentration is set at
the lateral feeding cross sections, and Danckwerts’ boundary
condition is assumed at the outlet of the device. Also, zero
normal component of the concentration gradient is enforced
on all of the solid boundaries.
2
4
30 0 2
y
z
Qw /2
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Page 4 of 15
2.2 Assessment of mixing efficiency
The general setting for the assessment of mixing efficiency
in open inflow–outflow systems operating at steady-state
has been developed by some of these authors in a series of
previous articles (see, e.g., Cerbelli et al. 2008, 2009). Here,
we report only the main concepts that are useful to set up a
quantitative framework for interpreting the performance of
the micromixer geometry that constitutes the focus object of
this article. To this end, it is convenient to set up compact
notation for the domain where mixing takes place, hence-
forth denoted with Ω , as well as for its boundary 𝜕Ω . With
specific reference to the dimensionless coordinate represen-
tation depicted in Fig. 1, let
Sin = {(x, y, z) | |x| ≤ 1, |y| ≤ 1; z = − 5}
SI = {(x, y, z) ||x| ≤ 1, |z| ≤ 1; y = − 5}
(3)
SII = {(x, y, z) | |x| ≤ 1, |z| ≤ 1; y = 5}
Sout = {(x, y, z) | |x| ≤ 1, |y| ≤ 1; z = 25}
denote the top, lateral, and outlet cross sections, respectively.
Also, let
{ }
Sz̃ = (x, y, z) || |x| ≤ 1, |y| ≤ 1; z = z̃ (4)
be a generic cross section of the channel downstream the
impinging volume, 1 ≤ z̃ ≤ 25 , and Ωz̃ the mixing volume
between the entrance sections and Sz̃ . The solid walls will
henceforth be collectively referred to as Sw . Also, 𝐧 will
denote the local outwardly-oriented unit vector normal to
any of the boundary surfaces. The characterization of mixing
efficiency is grounded upon appropriate volume integrals of
Eq. (2), together with the equation
( ) 1 2
∇ ⋅ 𝐯c2 = ∇ ⋅ ∇c2 − ∇c ⋅ ∇c, (5)
Pe Pe
which is obtained by multiplying Eq. (2) by c, after taking
into account the incompressible nature of the flow. Integrat-
ing Eq. (2) over the volume enclosed between the entrance
cross sections Sin , SI , SII , and the generic cross section Sz̃ at
z̃ one obtains
∑ ( )
1 tial squared variance, say 𝜎02 , stemming from the prescribed
c 𝐯 − ∇c ⋅ 𝐧 dS𝛼 = 0 (6)
𝛼
∫ S𝛼 Pe
where 𝛼 stands for “in”, “I”, “II”, and “ z̃ ”. Note that the inte-
gral over the solid boundaries Sw vanishes identically since
both 𝐯 ⋅ 𝐧 and ∇c ⋅ 𝐧 are equal to zero. If the axial diffusion
contribution is neglected with respect to the convective com-
ponent, the surface integrals over SI and SII vanish identically
( c = 0 at the lateral inlets), and Eq. (6) reduces to
∫Sin
vz c dSin =
∫Sz̃
vz c dSz̃ (7)
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Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20
Because the total (dimensionless) volumetric flowrate Qtot
(see Fig. 1) is constant for 1 ≤ z̃ ≤ 25 due to flow incom-
pressibility, one gathers that the cup-average concentration
∫S vz c dSz̃ ∫S vz cin dSin R
(8)
z̃ in
c(̃z) = = = c =c
∫S vz dSz̃ Qtot 1 + R in
z̃
is constant in the assigned z̃ interval. Note that in this rela-
tionship cin is the dimensionless uniform concentration value
at the top entrance of the device, here assumed uniformly
equal to unity. The scalar variance 𝜎(̃z) , providing a global
measure of the distance between the actual concentration
profile c(x, y, z̃) and the perfectly mixed condition c = c(̃z)
is defined as
1 ( )2
𝜎 2 (̃z) = v c − c dSz̃ (9)
Qtot ∫Sz̃ z
Note that in order to interpret 𝜎 2 (̃z) as a global distance from
the homogeneous conditions, this quantity should be non-
negative, a condition that is satisfied if the axial velocity
component vz (x, y, z̃) is nonnegative at all the points of the
assigned cross section. In all of the results that are next pre-
sented, the minimum value of z̃ was chosen so as to ensure
that this condition is always met. The relationship between
𝜎 2 (̃z) and the structure of the three-dimensional concen-
tration field can be obtained from Eq. (5) with the same
approach used above for obtaining the cup-average concen-
tration from Eq. (2)
R
(
R
)
𝜎 2 (̃z) = c2in 1−
1+R 1+R
2 (10)
− ∇c ⋅ ∇c dΩz̃
Pe Qtot ∫Ωz̃
where c2in is the dimensionless concentration value charac-
terizing the solute-rich stream entering the device, which
is here equal to unity given that this value was chosen as
reference concentration, and Qtot is the total dimensionless
volumetric flowrate in the discharge channel, Qtot = 4 . The
first term at the r.h.s. of Eq. (10) can be regarded as the ini-
feeding conditions at all of the entrance cross sections of the
device. As can be readily inferred from Eq. (10), the scalar
variance can only decrease at increasing z̃ , since the volume
Ωz̃ over which the integral at the r.h.s. of Eq. (10) increases
with z̃  , and the squared gradient is nonnegative. Another
important conclusion that can be made from this equation,
is that in the limit where Pe goes to infinity 𝜎 2 (̃z) → 𝜎02 ,
i.e., no mixing occurs in the kinematic limit of vanishing
solute diffusivity.
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20 Page 5 of 15  20
From all of these observations it follows that a dimen-
sionless normalized measure of mixing efficiency, say 𝜂z̃ ,
can be defined as
𝜎(̃z)
𝜂z̃ = 1 − (11)
𝜎0
The overall device efficiency, henceforth denoted by 𝜂 , is
therefore given by
𝜎out
𝜂 =1− , (12)
𝜎0
where 𝜎out is the scalar variance measured at the device out-
let. In what follows we use these quantities to characterize
the mixing performance of the device under different operat-
ing conditions.
3 Steady‑state concentration maps
from ensemble statistics of noisy
Lagrangian trajectories
As briefly pointed out in the Introduction, a major issue in
predicting the performance of real world micromixers pro-
cessing liquid streams is related to the high value of the
Peclet number of the solutes subject to transport. In cases
where a full three-dimensional model is needed to capture
the relevant physical phenomenology of momentum and
mass transport, the computational effort required for deter-
mining an accurate solution of the advection–diffusion equa-
tion may become prohibitive. When the discretization of the
mass transport equation(s) is insufficient to accurately rep-
resent concentration gradients, numerical diffusion under-
mines the prediction of mixing efficiency so that the actual
Pe value of the computation, i.e., resulting from the super-
position of true and numerical diffusion, can be orders of
magnitude smaller than that of the targeted physical system.
For this reason, alternative approaches are needed, and dif-
ferent approximations have been applied to avoid the direct
Eulerian approach for computing the concentration field
(see, e.g., Matsunaga et al. 2013).
In transient mixing problems taking place in closed
domains, the possibility of tackling the problem from a
computationally different angle is provided by the Fok-
ker–Planck equivalence between the Eulerian probability
balance quantifying the evolving concentration field and the
stochastic process (Lasota and Mackey 2013)
√ the method for reconstructing the concentration field from
dxi (t) = vi (𝐱(t)) dt + 2∕Pe d𝜉i (t) {i = 1, 2, 3}, (13)
where dxi (t) is the i-th component of the total displacement
over the time dt of an advecting-diffusing particle subject to
the deterministic action of the velocity field 𝐯 = (v1 , v2 , v3 ) ,
and to the action of Brownian fluctuations expressed by
d𝜉i (t) , which is the i-th component of the increment of a
vector-valued Wiener process in the time √ interval dt , pos-
sessing zero mean and variance equal to dt . More specifi-
cally, one considers the ensemble statistics performed over
a large number of particles, say Np—initially distributed
throughout the mixing domain so as to satisfy the initial
concentration field c(𝐱, t = 0) = c0 (𝐱) . The evolving con-
centration field is computed as the box-counted particle
number density performed over a finite-size discretiza-
tion of the transport domain in subdomains of size 𝛿 . In
the limit where Np → ∞ , and 𝛿 → 0 , the box-counted den-
sity of particles converges to the (normalized) concentra-
tion field that is solution of the unsteady transport equation
𝜕t c = −∇ ⋅ (𝐯c) + (1∕Pe)∇2 c . This approach has been, in
fact, widely exploited to determine the mixing efficiency of
the most diverse stirring protocols in laminar (Vikhansky
2006), as well as turbulent (Dentz and Barros 2015) flow
regimes, especially in two-dimensional representations. It
has been also implemented with some degree of success in
the analysis of inflow–outflow devices that are constituted
by a unique channel possessing a single inlet and a single
outlet (Singh et al. 2008; Gorodetskyi et al. 2014a, b). How-
ever, as discussed below, the implementation of this method
to multiple-inlet multiple-outlet devices can lead to serious
inconsistencies, especially when the flowrate of the solute-
rich current is smaller than that of the pure solvent.
Next, we set forth on extending the Langevin-stochastic
approach to determine the steady-state concentration maps
at the cross sections at constant z̃ in the discharge channel
of the device, so as to determine the performance of the
device through Eq. (12). The underlying idea of the method
next described is to regard cross-sectional mixing along the
streamwise coordinate z as a two-dimensional transient prob-
lem taking place in closed domain, with the downstream
coordinate z playing the role of time. However, a straight-
forward transposition of the box-counting approach to the
analysis of devices with multiple-inlet/-outlet sections can
lead to conceptual and practical errors, ultimately causing
the violation of the basic properties of the concentration
field, namely the min–max principle and the conservation
of mass. In this respect, it is useful to start with the analysis
of the purely kinematic (diffusionless) limit of the transport
equation. In this setting, the steady-state advection–diffu-
sion equation reduces to ∇ ⋅ (𝐯c) = 𝐯 ⋅ ∇c = Dc∕Dt = 0 .
Thus, the entrance concentration value must be conserved
along a streamline, regardless of the computational method
employed. This observation provides a guidance to set up
cross-sectional box counting of the intersections of particles
trajectories, here coincident with the flow streamlines.
Consider a situation like that depicted in Fig. 2a, where
a two-dimensional setting has been assumed for simplic-
ity. Assume a unit concentration is fixed at the entrance
(top) cross section, here represented by a one-dimensional
13
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Page 6 of 15
∆S
∆lj = vz (Pj ) ∆t
s (volumetric) concentration at the point Ph at z̃ is given by
Pj z
∆lh = vz (Ph ) ∆t
Ph
∆S
(a)
(b)
Fig. 2  Pictorial representation of the mass balance constraint giving
rise to the velocity-weighted box-counting algorithm
interval. The flux tube of the solute-rich stream is shrunk
into a central lamella by lateral currents of fresh solvent (not
shown for simplicity). Note that the profiles of the vertical
velocity component are nonuniform along both the entrance
and exit cross sections of the control volume. Let us fix a
discretization of the cross sections into equal intervals of
size ΔS . Assume Np is the total number of streamlines, each
associated with a particle entering the flow domain, uni-
formly spaced onto the top cross section. Let Np be chosen so
that for a generic interval of width ΔS , centered at the point
Pj , the box-counted density of intersections
Nj
Fj(in) =
Np ΔS
is uniformly equal to unity. In Eq. (14), Nj is the number
of streamlines crossing the interval ΔS centered at Pj . The
number of particles, say Npart , entering the control volume
through ΔS at Pj in the interval Δt is proportional through
the volumetric concentration to the local normal veloc-
ity vz (Pj ) . Consider the same area element ΔS at a point
13
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20
Ph onto the cross section at z = z̃  , where Ph is chosen so
that all of the streamlines entering the system through ΔS
at Pj cross the surface element ΔS at Ph . At steady-state, the
number Npart of particles that originally occupied the vol-
ume ΔS vz (Pj ) Δt are now distributed throughout a volume
ΔS vz (Ph ) Δt . Therefore, the contribution of the cross-sec-
tional element at the point Pj of the inlet section to the local
| vz (Pj )
Fh(̃z) || = Fj(in) , (15)
|Fj
(in) vz (Ph )
where “ ||F(in) ” reads “conditioned to”. Clearly, other stream-
j
lines started at contiguous locations with respect to the sur-
face element ΔS at Pj also contribute to the overall value of
Fh(̃z) . Thus, for a generic time-independent discrete represen-
tation of inlet concentration profile, cin (Pj ) , where Pj belongs
to the inlet cross section, the overall contribution to the box-
counted approximation to the concentration cz̃ (Ph ) at a cross
section located at z = z̃ is given by
∑ vz (Pj )
cz̃ (Ph ) = cin (Pj ) Fj(in) , (16)
j∈𝕁
vz (Ph )
where 𝕁 represents the set of all of the cells belonging to the
inlet section whose streamlines possess nonempty intersec-
tion with the surface element ΔS centered at the point Ph
belonging to the cross section at z̃ . From this simple argu-
ment one gathers that in the purely convective limit each
intersection of a particle trajectory with a prescribed cross
section contributes to the local concentration value through
the weighting factor vz (P0 )∕vz (Pz̃ ) , where P0 and Pz̃ are the
intersections of the trajectory with the inlet cross section
and the cross section at z̃ . One notes that in the limit where
ΔS, Δt → 0 , the coarse-grained concentration field so
defined ensures mass conservation as well as conservation
of the concentration value when moving along a streamline,
i.e., it satisfies all of the fundamental properties of the solu-
tion to the pure advection equation.
Two arguments may seem to undermine the extension of
the above method to the case in which Brownian diffusion
is also present (see Fig. 2b), namely
(14) 1. The presence of diffusion, however small, destroys any
kinematic invariant associated with the flow, thus mak-
ing the physical argument used to derive Eq. (15) not
altogether straightforward.
2. The lateral surfaces of the volume elements depicted in
Fig. 2a are permeable to the diffusive flow; therefore, the
particle number balance motivating the introduction of
the weighting factor needs no longer hold true.
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20 Page 7 of 15  20

The latter issue can be readily shown to be immaterial, in

that a choice of the time interval Δt << ΔS∕vz (P) in the limit
ΔS → 0 , Δt → 0 makes the lateral surface of the volume
element much smaller than that of the base surface element,
and therefore makes the mass flowrate through the lateral
surface negligible with respect to that associated with the
surface element ΔS . As regards the first issue, one notes that
even though the noiseless physical picture giving rise to the
relationship in Eq. (15) can be used as a conceptual frame-
work to introduce the box-counted concentration mapping
expressed by Eq. (16), the only true physical assumptions
for its validity are that (1) time-independent conditions char-
acterize the concentration field at the feeding cross section,
(2) steady-state conditions have been reached, and (3) con-
vective transport is the only mechanism by which the solute
enters and leaves the control volume at the feeding section
and the generic cross section at z̃ , respectively. Clearly, when
tracking the noisy trajectories, an integration time large
enough to guarantee that all of the particles starting at t = 0
at the domain inlet do actually cross the prescribed cross
section at z̃ must be allowed.
Based on these observations, we next use Eq. (16) to
determine the concentration fields stemming from different Fig. 3  A detail of the nonuniform mesh used for the numerical solu-
operating conditions at fixed Schmidt number and variable tion of the velocity field. A finer discretization has been enforced in
Re and R values. The method is first validated by comparison the region where the feeding currents impinge onto each other, where
steep velocity gradients are expected
with the Eulerian solution of the concentration field obtained
by using the COMSOL Multiphysics platform at values of
Pe ≤ 103 , that are expected low enough so as to yield a solu- explain why the symmetrical solution, which proves robust
tion to the mass transport problem that is not overshadowed with respect to small perturbations, can be actually observed
by numerical diffusion. in physical experiments. Let us next move to the analysis of
the kinematic structures stemming from different operating
conditions specified by the dimensionless parameters Re and
4 Results R. Figure 4 shows the structure of half of the flux tube of the
stream entraining the solute at low flow ratio, R = 5 × 10−3 ,
4.1 Kinematic structure of the flux tube which corresponds to an average velocity in the top feed-
ing channel a hundred times smaller than those of the pure
The steady-state momentum transport problem described in solvent streams entering the device from the lateral inlets.
Sect. 2 was solved using COMSOL Multiphysics commer- As can be observed, the simple lamellar structure of the
cial suite. Since steep gradients are expected in the region flux tube that is evident at Re = 1 (Fig. 4a) is progressively
where the feeding currents impinge onto each other, a finer destroyed as the Reynolds number increases. This topologi-
discretization is used to represent this region (see Fig. 3). cal transition of the kinematic flux tube is altogether general
Overall, the mesh consists of order 1.5 × 106 tetrahedral in microfluidic systems, and can be ascribed to the inter-
elements. action of flow inertia with sharp boundaries at the chan-
At values of Re such that the flow is steady, a twofold nel intersections (Damian et al. 2017; Wong et al. 2004).
symmetry about the xz and the yz planes passing through Recirculation loops in the impinging region are already
the origin of the coordinate system can be assumed, so in clearly appreciable at Re = 30 [panel (b) of the figure], until
principle one would only need to simulate one fourth of the a topologically rich structure develops for the flux tube at
structure. Our motivation for representing the entire domain Re = 100 , where the branches originated by the current
is that this choice, combined with the use of an unstruc- impact are increasingly attracted toward the high-velocity
tured—and therefore not symmetrical—mesh, indirectly pro- core of the channel when moving downstream the chan-
vides a robustness check on the symmetrical solution. Thus, nel intersection. It can be seen that the topological transi-
the results presented here also provide a further confirmation tion occurs via the formation of vortices at the center of
of those reported in Damian et al. (2017) and ultimately the impinging zone, whose axes are initially collinear with

13
20 
Page 8 of 15
Fig. 4  Three-dimensional
kinematic structure of half of
the flux tube of the solute-rich
stream at fixed flowrate ratio
R = 5 × 10−3 . a–c Depict the
cases Re = 1 , Re = 30 , and
Re = 100 , respectively
the directions of the feeding streams and are then progres-
sively bent until they become aligned to the z direction in the
discharge channel. Note that this vortex structure is inher-
ently three-dimensional and, as such, cannot be captured by
a two-dimensional representation of the momentum trans-
port equation. We observe that the qualitative transition of
the kinematic flux tube with increasing Re is a phenomenon
that is qualitatively robust even with respect to changes of
the device geometry not shown for brevity.
A clearer representation of this phenomenon is reported
in Fig.   5, which shows the intersection of the solute-
rich stream with planes at constant z̃  . The three columns
labeled a, b, and c represent different fluid dynamic con-
ditions, namely Re = 100 and R = 5 × 10−3 , Re = 150 and
R = 5 × 10−2 , Re = 100 and R = 5 × 10−1 , respectively. The
rows identify different cross sections, three located at the
top ( z̃ = − 1 ), the center ( z̃ = 0 ), and the bottom ( z̃ = + 1 )
of the central cubic cell constituting the core of the imping-
ing region, two located at an intermediate position down-
stream the discharge channel and close to the device exit. We
observe that in all of the cases shown, the structure of the
flux tube becomes z-invariant before reaching the channel
exit (see animated videos in the Supplementary Material),
thus implying that the flow at the channel exit has converged
to a Poiseuille profile for the values of Re considered.
For the operating conditions depicted, the Reynolds num-
ber is large enough so that the classical hydrodynamic focus-
ing structure cannot be observed, with the exception of case
c at the exit of the impinging region ( z̃ = 1 ). However, this
single lamellar structure quickly develops into a double-T-
shaped flux tube which is progressively pushed toward the
channel walls, there attaining a complex folded structure. At
low and intermediate values of the flow ratio (cases a and b)
the flux tube develops into a convoluted structure possessing
a twofold symmetry that runs in the central core of the chan-
nel. Since the local velocity is high in this region, the overall
13
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20
area of the tube cross section is significantly reduced and its
thickness shrunk to very small lengthscales. This difference
between the average thickness of the flux tube, depending on
whether it becomes localized in the core or at the near-wall
region of the discharge channel, ultimately driven by the
existence of a nonuniform axial velocity profile, is the fun-
damental mechanism explaining the nontrivial response of
mixing efficiency at increasing values of the Reynolds num-
ber that constitutes the main focus of the next section. We
also observe that the kinematic transition of the flux tubes
just described could not be captured by any two-dimensional
representation of the system (Damian et al. 2017).
To obtain the representation of Fig.  5, velocity data
obtained through the COMSOL Multiphysics software were
exported on a regular grid of order 7 × 106 nodes. The nodal
values were thus trilinearly interpolated so as to define a
locally smooth, globally continuous velocity field 𝐯int (𝐱) .
Starting from this vector field, trajectories originating from
order 105 points uniformly distributed over the top feeding
cross section at z = − 5 were computed as solutions of the
ODE system d𝐱∕dt = 𝐯int (𝐱) by using a standard fourth-order
Runge–Kutta integration scheme. Because the geometric
structure of the trajectories is independent of the magnitude
|𝐯 (𝐱)| of 𝐯 (𝐱) (it only depends on its local direction), a
| int | int
normalized velocity was enforced in the integration so as
to speed up the computation. Results of this procedure are
reported in Fig. 5 for different values of Re and R at different
locations z̃ of the cross section
4.2 Steady‑state concentration field and mixing
efficiency
Cross-sectional concentration profiles were reconstructed
through the box-counting procedure expressed by Eq. (16).
We observe that in the purely convective limit this proce-
dure is exact, meaning that when ΔS → 0 and the number
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20 Page 9 of 15  20
(a) (b) (c)
z̃ = −1
z̃ = 0
z̃ = 1
z̃ = 8
z̃ = 24
y operating conditions.
x at z̃ = 24 , i.e., near the device outlet. The three rows corre-
Fig. 5  Intersections of the flux tube of the solute-rich stream
with planes at constant z̃ (see main text for details). a Re = 100 ,
R = 5 × 10−3 ; b Re = 150 , R = 5 × 10−2 ; c Re = 100 , R = 5 × 10−1 .
The black central square depicts the domain |x| ≤ 1; |y| ≤ 1 . Note
that for − 1 ≤ z̃ ≤ 1 , the flux tube invades part of the lateral feeding
channels along the y direction (gray-shaded area)
of trajectories goes to infinity, the factor based on the
velocity ratio is the only weighting function ensuring mass
conservation within an arbitrary flux tube. Based on the
physical arguments developed in Sect. 3, this relationship
is expected to hold true even in the presence of spanwise
diffusion. Thus, the most severe test to check the validity of
the weighted box-counting approximation of the steady-state
concentration field is provided by the cases characterized by
(relatively) low values of the Peclet number. Besides, these
cases are precisely those for which a Eulerian approach to
the solution through the finite-element discretized approach
is expected to yield an accurate solution. In the present case,
a preliminary analysis (not discussed here for brevity) shows
that the limit Peclet value at which the solution obtained
through the package transport of dilute species of COMSOL
Multiphysics can be considered accurate is Pe ≃ 103 , when
the advection–diffusion equation is solved onto the same
computational mesh used for solving the Navier–Stokes
equation. Thus, we take this limit value to quantitatively
validate the Lagrangian approach. Figure 6 shows the con-
centration profiles along the center line x = 0 , − 1 ≤ y ≤ 1 at
the exit cross section of the device for two values of the flow
ratio R = 5 × 10−1 ; 5 × 10−2 at Re = 1 and Re = 10 [Panel
(a) and (b), respectively].
Because the Schmidt number was fixed at the ref-
erence value Sc = 103 , the first case corresponds to
Pe = Re Sc = 103 , the second to Pe = 104 . As can be
observed, the profiles stemming from the two different
approaches closely agree at Pe = 103 , whereas a significant
discrepancy is already evident at Pe = 104 , thus implying
that the computational grid used for the Eulerian solution
introduces significant numerical diffusion effects, which
are expected to grow unchecked when operating conditions
involving Re = 102 or higher (and therefore Pe ≃ 105 ) are
considered.
This much established, we next analyze the features of
the concentration field at those Re values where the Eule-
rian approach is unfeasible unless extremely large computing
facilities are affordable. Figure 7 depicts the concentration
fields of the diffusing species computed through the Lagran-
gian velocity-weighted box-counted average for different
Left and right columns in the picture represent the cross
sections at z̃ = 3 (i.e., just below the impinging region), and
spond to different fluid dynamic conditions, namely Re = 102
and R = 5 × 10−3  , Re = 1.5 × 102 and R = 5 × 10−2  ,
Re = 102 and R = 5 × 10−1 , from bottom to top. In all of
the cases, because of the large Pe values, the patterns of the
concentration field closely mimic those of the correspond-
ing kinematic flux tube [compare, e.g., panels (f) and (g) of
Fig. 7 with the cases “a” and “c” at z̃ = 24 of Fig. 5]. How-
ever, the level of mixedness reached at the exit cross section
is rather different, depending on the operating conditions
(note that the color scale of concentration values is not the
same for all cases shown). From the analysis of the cases
shown, one would be driven to conclude that the degree of
homogenization of the diffusing species, and therefore the
efficiency of the microfluidic device, depends essentially on
the flow ratio, and specifically, the lower the value of R, the
higher the degree of mixedness. However, this conclusion is
readily disproved by the comparison of results obtained with
the same flow ratio, R, but different Re values. Consider,
13
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Page 10 of 15 Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20

Fig. 6  Comparison between the 1

Eulerian (symbols) and Lagran- a 1
gian (continuous lines) solution a
of the steady-state concentration 0.75
field along the symmetry line 0.75
x = 0 , − 1 ≤ y ≤ 1 at Re = 1
( Pe = 103 ) (a), and Re = 10 0.5

c
0.5
( Pe = 104 ) (b). Labels “a” and
“b” refer to R = 5 × 10−1 and 0.25 b
R = 5 × 10−2 , respectively b 0.25

0 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
y y
(a) (b)

Fig. 7  Concentration maps
computed from velocity- z̃ = 3 z̃ = 24
weighted box-counted intersec- 1 1 1 1
tions of noisy trajectories with
the planes at z̃ = 3 (left column) 0.8 0.8
0.5 0.5
and z̃ = 24 (right column). Let-
tering is consistent with Fig. 5. 0.6 0.6
a Re = 102 , R = 5 × 10−3 b 0 0 (c)
y

y
Re = 1.5 × 102 , R = 5 × 10−2 ; 0.4 0.4
c Re = 102 , R = 5 × 10−1 . Note -0.5 -0.5
that the range of the color scale 0.2 0.2
is different depending on the
case (color figure online) -1 0 -1 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x x

1 1 1 1

0.8 0.8
0.5 0.5
0.6 0.6
0 0 (b)
y

0.4 0.4
-0.5 -0.5
0.2 0.2

-1 0 -1 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x x

1 0.25 1 0.25

0.2 0.2
0.5 0.5
0.15 0.15
0 0 (a)
y

0.1 0.1
-0.5 -0.5
0.05 0.05

-1 0 -1 0
-1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1
x x

13
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20 Page 11 of 15  20

Fig. 8  Comparison between the

kinematic structure of the flux
tube of the solute-rich stream
and the concentration profiles
for Re = 80 ; R = 5 × 10−2 .
The left column represents the
kinematic structures, the right
column the concentration maps.
a, b: z̃ = 3 ; c, d z̃ = 13 ; e, f
z̃ = 24 (color figure online)

for instance, the case Re = 80 , R = 5 × 10−2 represented in
Fig. 8, where the concentration maps at different cross sec-
tions of the discharge channel are reported together with the
corresponding intersection of the kinematic flux tube.
At this combination of flow ratio and Reynolds number
values, the kinematic flux tube entraining the solute-rich
stream is pushed toward the channel walls. Since in the
near-wall region the velocity is low, flow incompressibility
dictates that the thickness of the tube must retain relatively
large values. The corresponding concentration maps show
that cross-sectional mixing proceeds slowly in these condi-
tions when moving downstream the device, as can be gath-
ered by the fact that concentration values in the core region
of the flux tube at the channel outlet are still very close to

13
20 
Page 12 of 15
unity. The situation is rather different when increasing flow
inertia causes the flux tube to be pushed away from the wall
toward the core of the discharge channel, as was observed
at the same flow ratio R = 5 × 10−2 but for a slightly higher
Reynolds value, Re = 1.5 × 102 (see the central column of
Fig. 5 and case b of Fig. 7). Here, because of the large veloc-
ity values, the flux tube is swiftly squeezed to a thin convo-
luted shape. As a consequence, cross-sectional concentration
gradients are amplified by the cross-sectional components of
the convective flow, and mixing proceeds faster with respect
to the lower Re case at the same flow ratio.
Thus, the main qualitative conclusion that can be drawn
from the analysis of the structure of the concentration fields
is that the influence of fluid dynamics on cross-sectional
mixing of the diffusing solute occurs through the sensitive
dependence of the geometry of flux tube entraining the sol-
ute-rich stream. High mixing efficiency is expected when
the combination of flow inertia and flow ratio is such as to
yield a flux tube that becomes progressively localized in the
central (core) region of the discharge channel, since the local
high-velocity values imply—by flow incompressibility—low
average thickness of the kinematic flux tube.
A B
1
0.8
0.6
η
0.4
0.2
0
103 104
Pe
Fig. 9  Mixing efficiency at increasing Pe for a flow ratio R = 5 × 10−2 . Empty symbols: fixed Sc = 103 and increasing Re; Solid symbols: fixed
Re = 1 and increasing Sc. The insets depict the concentration fields at z̃ = 24
13
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20
The quantitative representation of this conclusion is pro-
vided by the normalized scalar variance and of the overall
mixing efficiency, defined by Eqs. (9) and (12), respectively.
Since the values of the above quantities may be affected
by the degree of discretization of the domain over which
they are computed, we performed a preliminary sensitiv-
ity analysis to determine the impact of this parameter (not
shown for brevity). The results showed that the dependence
of the curve on the box size becomes essentially immaterial
when discretizations of order 200 × 200 boxes or finer are
considered. Based on these results, we fixed the size of the
discretization to a 300 × 300 grid and computed the over-
all mixing efficiency for three representative values of the
flow ratio, R = 5 × 10−3 ; 5 × 10−2 ; 5 × 10−1 , and Reynolds
numbers ranging from Re = 1 up to Re = 1.5 × 102 . Before
commenting these results, it is worth pointing out that if flow
inertia had no impact on the kinematic structures of the flow,
a monotonically decreasing trend of the overall efficiency
𝜂 versus Re should be expected, in that, at fixed Sc, the Pe
number increases proportionally with Re.
In order to single out the effect of the Pe number from the
inertia-driven change of geometry of the flow kinematics,
C
D
105
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20 Page 13 of 15  20
in Fig. 9 we compared the performance of different pro-
tocols as a function of the Pe number for fixed flow ratio
R = 5 × 10−2.
The empty symbols ( Δ ) report the values of efficiency at
Sc = 103 and increasing Re. Here a minimum of efficiency
can be observed at Pe = 8 × 104 (corresponding to Re = 80 ),
followed by a rapid efficiency increase up to Pe = 1.5 × 105 .
The filled symbols ( ▴ ) are instead obtained by holding the
Reynolds number fixed at Re = 1 , and increasing Sc. Thus,
in the last case, the kinematic features of the flow do not
change as Pe is increased, and the geometry of the flux tube
consists of a hydrodynamically focused central lamellar
structure, which is qualitatively analogous to the structure
depicted in Fig. 4a. The comparison of the two curves shows
that the effect of increasing the Reynolds number is first to
decrease efficiency, even below the value that pertains to the
lamellar-shaped flux tube associated with the creeping flow
regime, until a threshold value is reached, beyond which the
trend is abruptly inverted. It is interesting to note that low
efficiency in the inertial flow occurs whenever the solute-
rich stream is localized at the channel walls (the insets in the
figure show the concentration contours at the device exit).
Conversely, after the topological transition of flow geometry
has occurred, the solute-rich stream is squeezed into such
a thin structure that the amplification of transversal con-
centration gradients can overshadow even the effect of the
increasing values of Pe.
From this preliminary observation it follows that the
existence of extremal points (be them minimal or maximal
extremals) in the efficiency response at fixed flow ratio R
and increasing Re are to be entirely ascribed to the impact
1
0.8
0.6
η
0.4
0.2
0 is increased by almost a decade. Thus, by accurately tuning
1 10 100
Re
Fig. 10  Mixing efficiency at increasing Re and fixed flow ratio R.
The Schmidt number is set to Sc = 103 in all of cases shown. (∇) :
R = 5 × 10−3 ; (Δ) : R = 5 × 10−2 (◦) : R = 5 × 10−1
of changing geometry of the kinematic flux tube entraining
the solute-rich stream, which, at fixed flow ratio, is driven
by the increasing impact of flow inertia.
A synoptic representation of the mixing response of the
microfluidic device versus Re at different values of the flow
ratio R is shown in Fig. 10. A sensitivity analysis of the data
reported in the figure to the numerical details of the Lagran-
gian approach was carried out by sub-dividing the ensemble
of noisy trajectories into ten equally sized, nonoverlapping
subsets of initial particle positions. In all of the cases shown
the relative error of efficiency resulted of order 1% or below.
The values of R increase by two decades, from
R = 5 × 10−3 of the upper curve to R = 5 × 10−1 of the lower
curve. For the lowest flow ratio (upper curve) a complex
trend exhibiting both a minimum and a maximum efficiency
is found. By the observations put forward above, this behav-
ior can be readily interpreted in terms of flow kinematics.
The range of Re associated with increasing efficiency are
those for which the kinematic flux tube entraining the sol-
vent is progressively pushed away from the walls to become
localized in the channel core. After the localization has
occurred, efficiency starts decreasing again because of the
increasing Pe values, while the kinematic structures of the
flow remain qualitatively unaltered. As regards the response
at relatively high values of R ( R = 5 × 10−1 , lower curve of
the figure), a complete detachment of the solute entraining
tube from the device walls is never observed in the entire
range of Re values considered, and the slowing of the effi-
ciency decrement at increasing Re can be ascribed to the fact
that the lamellar structure formed at the impinging region
still undergoes some degree of shrinking as it is progres-
sively transformed into the four-lobed geometry approaching
all of the channel walls (see Fig. 5).
As can be gathered by the values depicted in Fig. 10, the
incremental effect of flow inertia on mixing efficiency—
which was qualitatively highlighted when describing the
structure of the concentration fields—can be quantitatively
quite substantial. For instance, the analysis of the upper
curve of the figure (corresponding to the lowest flow ratio,
R = 5 × 10−3 ) shows that the same efficiency is obtained at
Re = 102 and Re = 15 . An analogous observation holds true
for the intermediate curve of Fig. 10a, where the efficiency
reached at Re = 1.4 × 102 is equal to that associated with a
value of the Reynolds number almost ten times smaller. On
a practical level, this implies that the same level of efficiency
is obtained when, for a fixed device geometry, temperature,
and nature of the solute, the overall (dimensional) flowrate
the fluid dynamic conditions so that the geometry of the kin-
ematic flux tube entraining the solute-rich current possesses
favorable features as regards the amplification of transversal
concentration gradients, productivity can be increased size-
ably for one and the same physical system.
13
20 
Page 14 of 15
5 Conclusions
The mixing efficiency of a solute entering a flow-focusing
microfluidic cross-junction with squared cross section is
numerically investigated in a three-dimensional setting at
increasing values of the Reynolds number, ranging from
creeping flow conditions to weakly inertial regimes, and for
flow ratios spanning two orders of magnitude. The analysis
presented, motivated by recent results highlighting nontrivial
effects of flow inertia on the kinematic features induced by
the velocity field (Damian et al. 2017), is here made pos-
sible by a novel method for computing the steady-state
concentration field onto prescribed cross- sections, which
is based upon velocity-weighted box-counted averages for
an ensemble of particle trajectories undergoing a stochastic
advecting-diffusing process. This method proves an efficient
alternative to the direct Eulerian approach to the solution of
the advection–diffusion equation in that it does away with
numerical diffusion issues that typically undermine localized
discretization approaches to solute transport when values
of the Peclet number of order 103 or above are considered.
The analysis of the partially mixed structures exhibited
by the diffusing species downstream the microfluidic device
in different fluid dynamic conditions highlights a rich and
diversified phenomenology, where different degrees of mix-
edness are obtained depending on the geometric structure
of the kinematic flux tubes entraining the solute-rich stream
entering the device. The qualitative conclusion of this analy-
sis is that mixing efficiency is increased whenever the com-
bination of flow ratio and flow inertia (quantified by Re)
gives rise to a kinematic flux tube that becomes localized
in the central core of the discharge channel. Under these
conditions, the transversal lengthscales of the flux tube can
be shrunk by orders of magnitude, thus amplifying cross-
sectional concentration gradients and sustaining the trans-
versal Fickian flux. This observation ultimately explains how
conditions that correspond to increasing values of the Pe
number can result in an increase in mixing efficiency. Con-
versely, when the flux tube entraining the solute is pushed
toward the channel walls, transversal lengthscales are not
reduced so efficiently because of the locally low values of
axial velocity, and the enhancement of mixing efficiency is
not equally effective.
Different directions of future work may branch from the
observations put forward in this article. One line of inves-
tigation is to use the toolbox of dynamical system theory
to single out a relevant length scale quantifying the aver-
age thickness of the kinematic flux tube which is expected
to control the rate of homogenization onto the cross sec-
tion transversal to the average flow direction. This could be
achieved by extending to the three-dimensional setting the
methods developed in Meunier and Villermaux (2010) and
13
Microfluidics and Nanofluidics (2018) 22:20
Villermaux (2012) for predicting the rate of homogenization
from local stretching rates in two-dimensional settings.
A different—yet practically relevant—approach would
be to perform a study where target fluid dynamic operating
conditions are chosen, and mixing efficiency is investigated
for Sc numbers varying in the range 104 ≃ 105 , representa-
tive of relatively large solute molecules (e.g., of biological
or clinical interest). Since mixing efficiency can be expected
to decrease significantly when Sc is increased to such values
at constant R and Re, device geometries with remarkably
longer discharge channels should be considered in this anal-
ysis. In this respect, the fact that at relatively low Re (i.e., in
the range analyzed in this article) the velocity fields swiftly
converges to the Poiseuille (z-invariant) profile downstream
the impinging region allows to devise a tailored computa-
tional approach, where the method described here is used
in the first part of the geometry, and a spectral pseudo-2d
approach is enforced to analyze mixing in the discharge
channel far from the impinging region.
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