Chun Myung-Suk, Shim Min Suk, Choi Nak Won
Complex Fluids Research Laboratory, Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), PO Box 131, Cheongryang, Seoul 130-650, Republic of Korea.
Lab Chip. 2006 Feb;6(2):302-9. doi: 10.1039/b514327f. Epub 2006 Jan 6.
To elaborate on the applicability of the electrokinetic micro power generation, we designed and fabricated the silicon-glass as well as the PDMS-glass microfluidic chips with the unique features of a multi-channel. Besides miniaturizing the device, the key advantage of our microfluidic chip utilization lies in the reduction in water flow rate. Both a distributor and a collector taking the tapered duct geometry are positioned aiming the uniform distribution of water flow into all individual channels of the chip, in which several hundreds of single microchannels are assembled in parallel. A proper methodology is developed accompanying the deep reactive ion etching as well as the anodic bonding, and optimum process conditions necessary for hard and soft micromachining are presented. It has been shown experimentally and theoretically that the silicon-based microchannel leads to increasing streaming potential and higher external current compared to those of the PDMS-based one. A proper comparison between experimental results and theoretical computations allows justification of the validity of our novel devices. It is useful to recognize that a material inducing a higher magnitude of zeta potential has an advantage for obtaining higher power density under the same external resistance.
为详细阐述电动微发电的适用性，我们设计并制造了具有多通道独特特征的硅 - 玻璃以及聚二甲基硅氧烷（PDMS） - 玻璃微流控芯片。除了使设备小型化外，我们利用微流控芯片的关键优势在于降低水流速率。采用锥形管道几何形状的分配器和收集器均被设置，目的是使水流均匀分布到芯片的所有单独通道中，其中数百个单微通道并行组装。伴随着深刻蚀反应离子刻蚀以及阳极键合开发了一种合适的方法，并给出了硬微加工和软微加工所需的最佳工艺条件。实验和理论均表明，与基于PDMS的微通道相比，基于硅的微通道会导致更大的流动电势和更高的外部电流。实验结果与理论计算之间的适当比较可以证明我们新型器件的有效性。认识到在相同外部电阻下，诱导更高zeta电位幅度的材料在获得更高功率密度方面具有优势是很有用的。
