Ultrafast mixing and materials synthesis
Our acoustic micromixers and droplet reactors homogenise liquids in milliseconds at high throughput. We use them to make nanodrugs, protein nanoparticles, water-in-water emulsions and perovskite nanocrystals with controlled size and structure, and, with collaborators in materials science, to study how nanomaterials nucleate and grow. This work is supported by an ARC Discovery Project (2026–2030).
Selected recent papers
Deng, H.; Nguyen, L.; Shenoda, A.; Banerjee, P.; Mehlawat, N.; Cao, C.; Sharma, K.; Sharma, M.; Brenker, J.; Martino, M. M.; Jasieniak, J.; Alan, T., Tunable passive chaotic mixing in droplet microfluidics for controlled nanomaterial synthesis. Physics of Fluids 2025, 37 (8), 082055.
Sharma, M.; Cao, C.; Sepalage, G. A.; Tang, S.; Nguyen, L.; Deng, H.; Nurrosyid, N.; Yan, J.; Moon, J.; Alan, T.; Hutchison, J. A.; Mulvaney, P.; Jasieniak, J. J., Co-doped perovskite nanocrystals for multiplexed anticounterfeiting applications. Nanoscale 2025, 17 (16), 9996–10005.
Sharma, K.; Deng, H.; Banerjee, P.; Peng, Z.; Gum, J.; Baldelli, A.; Jasieniak, J.; Meagher, L.; Martino, M. M.; Gundabala, V.; Alan, T., High precision acoustofluidic synthesis of stable, biocompatible water-in-water emulsions. Ultrasonics Sonochemistry 2024, 111, 107120.
Pourabed, A.; Brenker, J.; Younas, T.; He, L.; Alan, T., A lotus shaped acoustofluidic mixer: high throughput homogenisation of liquids in 2 ms using hydrodynamically coupled resonators. Ultrasonics Sonochemistry 2022, 83, 105936.
Pourabed, A.; Younas, T.; Liu, C.; Shanbhag, B. K.; He, L.; Alan, T., High throughput acoustic microfluidic mixer controls self-assembly of protein nanoparticles with tuneable sizes. Journal of Colloid and Interface Science 2021, 585, 229–236.
Le, N. H. A.; Deng, H.; Devendran, C.; Akhtar, N.; Ma, X.; Pouton, C.; Chan, H.-K.; Neild, A.; Alan, T., Ultrafast star-shaped acoustic micromixer for high throughput nanoparticle synthesis. Lab on a Chip 2020, 20 (3), 582–591.
Acoustic micromixers
Effective and rapid mixing of liquids is crucial for synthesis of nanoparticles, which are widely used as engineered drug carrying vehicles and building blocks of new materials. When conventional, high throughput batch methods are used, mixing times can take up to several seconds. While seemingly short, the fluctuation of reactant concentrations and temperatures during this period significantly affects the end results, hampering particle uniformity. On the other extreme, a substantial reduction in mixing times (acoustic actuation often results in the fastest mixing) is not possible without a substantial reduction in throughput. While useful at lab bench, this significantly limits practical uptake of the technologies.
To address this, we have developed a series of mixers, which can homogenise liquids with varying viscosities in milliseconds and at throughputs approaching 10 ml/min! The devices were used for nanodrug preparation, assembly of DNA and protein particles, controlled synthesis of perovskite nanoparticles. More recently, we have also demonstrated that the mixers can also be used to rapidly lyse cells opening new applications in biomedical sensing.