科研之友
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摘要
The traditional microfluidic systems and devices faced limitations such as power consumption and high driving force in the attempt for implementation as chemical analysis and environmental monitoring systems. The up-to-date development of chemistry and biology has generated great demand for lab-on-a-chip performing specific chemical and biological analysis, clinical diagnostics and biomedical processing. Manipulation of ultrasmall amount and great varieties of biofluids has also been a major issue challenging many researchers. Here we demonstrate in this article, a device utilizing electrically controllable surface tension as the driving force to deliver fluid flow in the order of nanoliters per minute or even smaller, without a dedicated actuator. This device is capable of pumping a continuous liquid column. This actuation mechanism of fluid flow in this device is based on electrowetting-on-dielectric (EWOD) effect and the physics of the fluid dynamics is governed by Navier-Stokes equation. It also has a built-in metering feature to precisely determine the flow rate without an additional flow sensor. The experimental results show that water can be electrically actuated successfully to flow in the microchannel at a flow rate of 18 nl/min under a potential of as low as 20 V. This is very attractive for applications which require an ultra miniaturized metering pump operated at a low power for portable environmental monitoring instruments, chemical analysis systems, implantable medical devices, drug delivery systems and clinical diagnostic systems.
- 出版日期2010-4
