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The purpose of this study is to provide a micromixer for achieving effective mixing of two liquids. The mixing of two liquids is difficult to achieve in microfluidic chips because they cannot form turbulence at small dimensions and velocities.

In this paper, four kinds of passive micromixers based on splitting–recombination and chaotic convection are compared. First, a better E-shape mixing unit based on the previous F-shape mixing unit has been designed. Then, the E-shape mixing units are further combined to form three micromixers (i.e. E-mixer, SESM and FESM).

Finally, the mixing experimental results show that the mixing indexes of E-mixer, SESM and FESM are more than those of F-mixer when the Reynolds number range is from 0.5 to 100. And at Re = 15, the lowest mixing index of E-mixer is 71%, which is the highest of the four micromixers.

At Re = 80, the highest mixing index of F-mixer and E-mixer is 92 and 94 per cent, respectively, and then it begins to decrease. But the mixing index of SESM and FESM remains close to 100 per cent.