Low-cost and flexible film-based digital microfluidic devices

Micro & nano letters

article

Yiqiang Fan¹  Xiaopeng Kong³  Dongping Chai¹  Bin Wei¹  Yajun Zhang¹ 

[1] School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Beijing University of Chemical Technology;School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Harvard University;Ltd (Shanghai Branch)

关键词: flexible electronics;    wetting;    microfluidics;    photolithography;    hydrophobicity;    surface treatment;    silicon;    polymer films;    carbon;    elemental semiconductors;    nanofabrication;    nanolithography;    flexible thin film;    carbon electrodes;    polyester film;    carbon resistive ink;    metal electrodes deposition;    polymer-based digital microfluidic device;    surface treatment;    hydrophobicity;    glass-silicon substrate;    photolithography procedure;    metal deposition instruments;    cleanroom environment;    water droplets;    electrowetting;    C;    Si;   

DOI  :  10.1049/mnl.2019.0382

学科分类：计算机科学（综合）

来源: Wiley

【 摘 要 】

This work proposed a low-cost and rapid fabrication approach for flexible thin film-based digital microfluidics. In this approach, the carbon electrodes were screen-printed on the surface of a polyester film using carbon resistive ink. Then, a layer of polyethylene was applied to seal the polyester film with electrodes. Finally, a surface treatment was conducted to enhance the hydrophobicity. Compared with the conventional fabrication approaches for digital microfluidic devices using metal electrodes deposition on glass/silicon substrate, the proposed fabrication technique for polymer-based digital microfluidic device is simple, low-cost, flexible, and without the requirement of sophisticated photolithography procedure, metal deposition instruments and cleanroom environment. The proposed polymer-based digital microfluidic device has a total thickness <200 μm. The whole device is transparent, flexible and bendable. A series of tests were also conducted for the manipulation of water droplets using electrowetting on the fabricated digital microfluidic devices. The proposed fabrication technique for flexible film-based digital microfluidics could have wide potential point-of-care applications in biological and medical filed.

【 授权许可】

CC BY|CC BY-ND|CC BY-NC|CC BY-NC-ND