Performances of a broad range of dielectric stacks for liquid dielectrophoresis transduction
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RESEARCH PAPER
Performances of a broad range of dielectric stacks for liquid dielectrophoresis transduction R. Renaudot • V. Agache • Y. Fouillet • M. Kumemura • L. Jalabert • D. Collard H. Fujita
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Received: 24 September 2012 / Accepted: 11 February 2013 / Published online: 3 March 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
Abstract Among digital microfluidic techniques, liquid dielectrophoresis (LDEP) is well adapted to displace insulating liquids. One of the current challenges for LDEP concerns the robustness of both the dielectric and hydrophobic coatings (deposited atop the driving electrodes). Indeed, such layers may be exposed to high electric field, during operation. There is a need to optimize this stack of insulating layers to first prevent from their dielectric breakdown, secondly reduce the actuation voltage, and lastly ensure a reproducible and well-controlled dropletgeneration process. For the first time, an extensive study is presented in that paper, comparing the performances of more than twenty different dielectric stacks (including SiN, High-K materials, hydrophobic coatings) from micro– nanoelectronics know-how and implemented onto a given LDEP design. This generic design features lateral bumps regularly spaced across coplanar electrodes to generate an array of 30 pL DI water droplets in a single open-plate architecture. The experiments have been carefully analyzed to identify which are the best stacks in terms of efficiency and quality for the LDEP transduction. As a result to that
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s10404-013-1156-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. R. Renaudot (&) V. Agache Y. Fouillet CEA-LETI, Minatec Campus, 38054 Grenoble, France e-mail: [email protected] M. Kumemura L. Jalabert D. Collard LIMMS/CNRS-IIS, (UMI 2820), The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan M. Kumemura H. Fujita IIS-Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 153-8505, Japan
study, we propose a guideline to adjust the dielectric coating properties (thickness, material) depending on the liquids to displace and targeted applications. Keywords Liquid dielectrophoresis Dielectric materials Actuation voltage Droplet generation List of Cair* Ci* Cliq* di Ebd f fth Fc g i L meff mqual Na1 Na1/2 R Rd/b Rw/d V Vbd VRMS Vth Vtot w a cliq Dt
symbols Capacitance of the air (F m-1) Capacitance of the dielectric layer (F m-1) Capacitance of the liquid (F m-1) Dielectric layer i thickness (m) Breakdown electric field (V m-1) Applied frequency (Hz) Threshold frequency (Hz) Surface tension force (N) Inter-electrode gap (m) Nomination of a dielectric i Electrodes length (m) Efficiency LDEP factor Quality LDEP factor Actuations number (see Table 2) Actuations number (see Table 2) Bump radius (m) Droplet-generation parameter (see Table 2) Droplet-generation parameter (see Table 2) Applied voltage (V) Breakdown voltage (V) Root mean square voltage (V) Threshold actuation voltage (V) Tot
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