Degeneration of flow pattern in acousto-elastic flow through sharp-edge microchannels

•The acoustic streaming in viscoelastic fluids is investigated for the first time.•A new phenomenon named “degeneration of the flow pattern” is observed.•A competition relation between acoustics and elasticity is revealed.•The acousto-elastic flow shows positive and negative mode. Acoustic streaming (AS) is the steady time-averaged flow generated by acoustic field, which has been widely used in enhancing mixing and particle manipulation. Current researches on acoustic streaming mainly focus on Newtonian fluids, while many biological and chemical solutions exhibit non-Newtonian properties. The acoustic streaming in viscoelastic fluids has been studied experimentally for the first time in this paper. We found that the addition of polyethylene oxide (PEO) polymer to the Newtonian fluid significantly altered the flow characteristics in the microchannel. The resulting acousto-elastic flow showed two modes: positive mode and negative mode. Specifically, the viscoelastic fluids under acousto-elastic flow exhibit mixing hysteresis features at low flow rates, and degeneration of flow pattern at high flow rates. Through quantitative analysis, the degeneration of flow pattern is further summarized as time fluctuation and spatial disturbance range reduction. The positive mode in acousto-elastic flow can be used for the mixing enhancement of viscoelastic fluids in the micromixer, while the negative mode provides a potential method for particle/cell manipulation in viscoelastic body fluids such as saliva by suppressing unstable flow.