Kumar A., Khusid B., James C., Acrivos A.
New Jersey Institute of Technology, US
Keywords: Electro-hydrodynamics, microfluidic device platforms, suspensions transport
Current approaches to build electro-hydrodynamic microfluidic devices involve the employment of standard photolithography methods in clean room environment [1] or/and the use of polymer-based manufacturing techniques [2]. Both of them require multiple steps to fabricate a microdevice equipped with an electrode array which is often not reusable due to difficulty of cleaning the electrodes. Contrary, we have developed a system which enables one to fabricate an electro-hydrodynamic microdevice by assembling commercially available components and control its operational parameters. A microfluidic device can easily be disassembled and the electrodes cleaned for reuse. The system consists of two independently controllable XYZ manipulation stages for manipulating the top and the bottom walls of a microfluidic device. We demonstrated the effectiveness of our developed approach for concentrating particles into focused regions of an electrohydro-dynamic chamber in which negatively polarized particles accumulate in the low field regions located above the grounded electrodes and form distinct cylinders (the particle volume fraction about 30%) aligned along the electrodes.
Journal: TechConnect Briefs
Volume: 3, Technical Proceedings of the 2007 NSTI Nanotechnology Conference and Trade Show, Volume 3
Published: May 20, 2007
Pages: 415 - 417
Industry sector: Sensors, MEMS, Electronics
Topic: Micro & Bio Fluidics, Lab-on-Chip
ISBN: 1-4200-6184-4