Wang He, Chen Liguo
Robotics and Microsystems Center, Soochow University, Soochow 215006, China.
School of Mechanical Engineering, Henan University of Engineering, Zhengzhou 451191, China.
Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Dec 16;11(12):1113. doi: 10.3390/mi11121113.
In order to get rid of the dependence on expensive photolithography technology and related facilities, an economic and simple design and fabrication technology for digital microfluidics (DMF) is proposed. The electrodes pattern was generated by inkjet printing nanosilver conductive ink on the flexible Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate with a 3D circuit board printer, food wrap film was attached to the electrode array to act as the dielectric layer and Teflon AF was sprayed to form a hydrophobic layer. The PET substrate and food wrap film are low cost and accessible to general users. The proposed flexible DMF chips can be reused for a long time by replacing the dielectric film coated with hydrophobic layer. The resolution and conductivity of silver traces and the contact angle and velocity of the droplets were evaluated to demonstrate that the proposed technology is comparable to the traditional DMF fabrication process. As far as the rapid prototyping of DMF is concerned, this technology has shown very attractive advantages in many aspects, such as fabrication cost, fabrication time, material selection and mass production capacity, without sacrificing the performance of DMF. The flexible DMF chips have successfully implemented basic droplet operations on a square and hexagon electrode array.
为摆脱对昂贵光刻技术及相关设施的依赖，提出了一种用于数字微流控（DMF）的经济且简便的设计与制造技术。通过使用3D电路板打印机在柔性聚对苯二甲酸乙二酯（PET）基板上喷墨打印纳米银导电墨水来生成电极图案，将食品保鲜膜附着到电极阵列上作为介电层，并喷涂特氟龙AF以形成疏水层。PET基板和食品保鲜膜成本低廉，普通用户均可获取。所提出的柔性DMF芯片通过更换涂有疏水层的介电膜可长期重复使用。对银迹线的分辨率和导电性以及液滴的接触角和速度进行了评估，以证明所提出的技术与传统DMF制造工艺相当。就DMF的快速原型制作而言，该技术在制造成本、制造时间、材料选择和大规模生产能力等诸多方面展现出极具吸引力的优势，同时又不牺牲DMF的性能。柔性DMF芯片已在方形和六边形电极阵列上成功实现了基本的液滴操作。
