Fabrication of microfluidic mixers with varying topography in glass using the powder-blasting process

The powder-blasting method is used to fabricate structures with a three-dimensional topography in glass using elastomeric masks. The relation between the mask opening width and the erosion depth is exploited to fabricate microstructures with varying depth in a single micropatterning step. As an application, planar three-dimensional micro-mixers were fabricated, which consist of a repeating convergent microfluidic nozzle structure. Three different designs of the micro-mixers were considered. The mixing of co-flowing laminar streams results from the generation of multiple vortices at the exit of the different convergent nozzles. (Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)