Development of a Millimeter-Scale Laminar Flow Mixer for Rapid Iteration of Sustainable Energy Materials

Abstract

Material discovery for sustainable energy materials has historically been rate-limited by low-throughput synthesis and characterization methods. However, using automation, these rate-limiting steps can be improved. The accelerated development of sustainable materials necessitates the creation of a high-throughput synthesis and assembly system, capable of rapidly iterating and characterizing proposed designs. Archerfish, the current tool used for multi-material deposition, is a strong first step in this direction, automatically generating compositional gradients of up to two material precursors. However, Archerfish has room for improvement: the device is only capable of handling at most two input precursors and is imprecise due to poor compositional control and mixing. As such, there is a need for an improved junction apparatus that can handle substantially more precursors and ensure mixing while retaining compositional control. Additional challenges associated with this device include the need to be chemically resistant, have millimeter-scale channels, and mix fluids that are initially joined in the laminar flow regime. The proposed design introduces flow obstacles akin to a magician’s sword box and is validated using CFD simulations and mixing experiments.