Jacky S. H. Lee

DC-dielectrophoretic separation of microparticles using an oil droplet obstacle

A new dielectrophoretic particle separation method is demonstrated and examined in the following experimental study. Current electrodeless dielectrophoretic (DEP) separation techniques utilize insulating solid obstacles in a DC or low-frequency AC field, while this novel method employs an oil droplet acting as an insulating hurdle between two electrodes. When particles move in a non-uniform DC field locally formed by the droplet, they are exposed to a negative DEP force linearly dependent on their volume, which allows the particle separation by size. Since the size of the droplet can be dynamically changed, the electric field gradient, and hence DEP force, becomes easily controllable and adjustable to various separation parameters. By adjusting the droplet size, particles of three different diameter sizes, 1 microm, 5.7 microm and 15.7 microm, were successfully separated in a PDMS microfluidic chip, under applied field strength in the range from 80 V cm-1 to 240 V cm-1. A very effective separation was realized at the low field strength, since the electric field gradient was proved to be a more significant parameter for particle discrimination than the applied voltage. By utilizing low strength fields and adaptable field gradient, this method can also be applied to the separation of biological samples that are generally very sensitive to high electric potential.

Electrokinetic flow in a free surface-guided microchannel

The purpose of this study is to investigate electro-osmotic flow in a free surface-guided microchannel. Although multiphase microfluidics has attracted interests over the past few years, electro-osmotic flow involving free surfaces has yet to be studied in great detail. Several proposed theoretical models describing this type of electro-osmotic flow need to be verified by experiments. In this work, a surface-guided microchannel was fabricated using an innovative fabrication process. Because the liquid stream was confined by surface properties, solid sidewalls did not exist in this microchannel. Instead, the sidewalls were water-air or water-oil interfaces. Using this microchannel, two systems were investigated: water-air system and water-oil system. The experimental results were compared against three proposed models in order to gain more understandings on this type of electro-osmotic flow. Experimental results show that the liquid velocity near the liquid-fluid interface resembles a pluglike profile for ...

An in-plane, bi-directional electrothermal MEMS actuator

This paper presents the design and testing results of an electrothermally driven MEMS (microelectromechanical systems) actuator. Different from conventional uni-directional U-beam thermal actuators, this in-plane bi-directional electrothermal (IBET) actuator is capable of producing displacements in two directions as a single device. It is important to note that merely coupling two conventional uni-directional U-beam electrothermal actuators is insufficient to achieve bi-directional motion, as the resistance from the oppositely configured actuator severely limits net motion and leads to poor performance. An optimized IBET design was obtained through numerical simulation using finite element modeling. The devices were fabricated using the standard polyMUMPs surface micromachining process. Experimental results demonstrate that the IBET microactuators have a displacement range of 12 µm (6 µm in either direction).

Study of volume swelling and interfacial tension of the polystyrene–carbon dioxide–dimethyl ether system

We investigated the interaction of blended carbon dioxide (CO2) and dimethyl ether (DME) with polystyrene (PS) through volume swelling and interfacial tension. The experiments were carried out over a temperature range of 423-483 K, and the pressure was varied from 6.89 MPa to 20.68 MPa. With an incremental concentration of DME in the blend, the volume swelling increased while the interfacial tension between the PS/blend gas mixture and the blend gas decreased. The validity of the Simha-Somcynsky (SS) equation of state (EOS) for the ternary system was established by comparing experimentally measured volume swelling to that obtained via SS-EOS.

Electrokinetic Concentration Gradient Generation Using a Converging-Diverging Microchannel

Creation of concentration gradients is important in the study of biological and chemical processes that are sensitive to concentration variations. This paper presents a simple method to generate a linear concentration gradient in electroosmotic flow in microchannels with converging and diverging geometries. The method is based on the enhanced diffusive mixing inside the microchannel. By varying the converging-diverging geometries, the degree of diffusive mixing can be controlled. Different concentration gradients can be obtained by varying the applied potential and the geometry. Concentration profiles with minimal axial variations can be achieved with a deviation of 7% and 3% over a channel length of 3mm and 1mm, respectively, for a 400μm wide microchannel. Although the underlying physics and mechanisms for creating concentration profiles in a converging-diverging microchannel are the same as a T-shaped micromixer, the converging-diverging microchannel can produce desired concentration profiles in a much shorter distance (shorter by a factor of 2∼3.5 compared to a T-shape mixer). A serially connected concentration gradient generator is also realized with the ability to generate two concentration gradient ranges in the same microchannel. Numerical simulations and experiments were carried out to investigate the factors contributed to the generation of the concentration gradients.Copyright

Enhancement of the Concentration Gradients Generated in Microchambers Appended in Microfluidic Systems

Concentration gradient in a chamber appended to a microchannel is important to cell movement control and to the concentration gradient based assays on Lab-on-a-Chip devises. In this paper, the effects on the concentration field of the asymmetrical injection, the Peclet number, the mobility ratio of electrophoresis to electroosmosis, the chamber’s downstream position, and the chamber’s geometry parameters, are investigated. The most sensitive parameter is the asymmetrical injection, which can increase the concentration gradient twice as large as to that in the symmetrical injection. Furthermore, using heterogeneous surface patches is a very effective way to enhance the concentration gradient generated in the chamber. Different patches for certain chambers are investigated. Finally, experimental visualization of the concentration fields was conducted, and good agreements were found between the numerical simulation results and the experimental results of the concentration fields generated in a micro-chamber with/without a heterogeneous patch.Copyright