Dataset Information

A Study of Dielectrophoresis-Based Liquid Metal Droplet Control Microfluidic Device.

ABSTRACT: This study presents a dielectrophoresis-based liquid metal (LM) droplet control microfluidic device. Six square liquid metal electrodes are fabricated beneath an LM droplet manipulation pool. By applying different voltages on the different electrodes, a non-uniform electric field is formed around the LM droplet, and charges are induced on the surface of the droplet accordingly, so that the droplet could be driven inside the electric field. With a voltage of ±1000 V applied on the electrodes, the LM droplets are driven with a velocity of 0.5 mm/s for the 2.0 mm diameter ones and 1.0 mm/s for the 1.0 mm diameter ones. The whole chip is made of PDMS, and microchannels are fabricated by laser ablation. In this device, the electrodes are not in direct contact with the working droplets; a thin PDMS film stays between the electrodes and the driven droplets, preventing Joule heat or bubble formation during the experiments. To enhance the flexibility of the chip design, a gallium-based alloy with melting point of 10.6 °C is used as electrode material in this device. This dielectrophoresis (DEP) device was able to successfully drive liquid metal droplets and is expected to be a flexible approach for liquid metal droplet control.

SUBMITTER: Tian L

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8004963 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Similar Datasets

Project description:Droplet microfluidics are characterized by the generation and manipulation of discrete volumes of solutions, generated with the use of immiscible phases. Those droplets can then be controlled, transported, analyzed or their content modified. In this wide droplet microfluidic toolbox, no means are available to generate, in a controlled manner, droplets co-encapsulating to aqueous phases. Indeed, current methods rely on random co-encapsulation of two aqueous phases during droplet generation or the merging of two random droplets containing different aqueous phases. In this study, we present a novel droplet microfluidic device to reliably and efficiently co-encapsulate two different aqueous phases in micro-droplets. In order to achieve this, we combined existing droplet microfluidic modules in a novel way. The different aqueous phases are individually encapsulated in droplets of different sizes. Those droplet populations are then filtered in order to position each droplet type towards its adequate trapping compartment in traps of a floating trap array. Single droplets, each containing a different aqueous phase, are thus paired and then merged. This pairing at high efficiency is achieved thanks to a unique combination of floating trap arrays, a droplet railing system and a droplet size-based filtering mechanism. The microfluidic chip design presented here provides a filtering threshold with droplets larger than 35 μm (big droplets) being deviated to the lower rail while droplets smaller than 20 μm (small droplets) remain on the upper rail. The effects of the rail height and the distance between the two (upper and lower) rails were investigated. The optimal trap dimensions provide a trapping efficiency of 100% for small and big droplets with a limited double trapping (both compartments of the traps filled with the same droplet type) of 5%. The use of electrocoalescence enables the generation of a droplet while co-encapsulating two aqueous phases. Using the presented microfluidic device libraries of 300 droplets, dual aqueous content can be generated in less than 30 min.

Dataset Information

A Study of Dielectrophoresis-Based Liquid Metal Droplet Control Microfluidic Device.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets