The angular momentum transferred by circularly polarized photons is able to rotate an optically trapped microparticle. Here, the optically rotating particle is introduced as an active micromixer to reduce the mixing time in a microfluidic system. To optimize the system for microfluidic application, the effect of several optical parameters such as spherical aberration and the numerical aperture of the objective on the rotation rate of a trapped particle is investigated. The results show that the optimized depth for the rotation of a particle is located close to the coverslip and can be changed by a fine adjustment of the refractive index of the immersion oil. By applying the obtained optimized optical parameters on a trapped particle at the interface of two fluids in a microchannel, the mixing length is reduced by a factor of ∼2.
