Liquid crystal pump

    Authors

    H. W. Ren; S. Xu;S. T. Wu

    Comments

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    Abbreviated Journal Title

    Lab Chip

    Keywords

    FOCAL LENGTH; LENS; VOLTAGE; LIGHT; DISPLAYS; DROPLET; Biochemical Research Methods; Chemistry, Multidisciplinary; Nanoscience; & Nanotechnology

    Abstract

    We report a dielectrically actuated liquid crystal (LC) pump. A small volume of LC forms a pillar-like droplet in a cylindrical hole which partially touches the bottom substrate with embedded interdigitated electrodes. By applying a voltage, the LC droplet can be largely stretched along the electrode direction by the generated dielectric force, which in turn exerts a pressure to displace a small volume of fluid on the opposite side of the chamber. Once the voltage is removed, the LC droplet returns to its initial state. The LC droplet with such a reciprocating movement behaves like a pump. In this work, the actuation mechanism of the LC pump is presented and the performance evaluated experimentally. Our LC pump has the following advantages: simple structure, easy fabrication, compact size, high precision, low power consumption, and relatively fast response time. It is promising for applications in lens actuators, biotechnology, drug delivery, and other lab-on-a-chip devices.

    Journal Title

    Lab on a Chip

    Volume

    13

    Issue/Number

    1

    Publication Date

    1-1-2013

    Document Type

    Article

    Language

    English

    First Page

    100

    Last Page

    105

    WOS Identifier

    WOS:000311973500011

    ISSN

    1473-0197

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