Temperature uniformity of microdroplet heated by buried surface acoustic wave device

In this paper, we have studied the uniformity of temperature of microdroplet heated by an original device based on Rayleigh surface acoustic wave in view of discrete microfluidic applications such as biological and chemical reactions. The new device consists to place the microdroplets directly on the transducer to avoid various losses such as wave propagation losses. The other major advantage of this device is that the self-heating of the transducer allows to increase the temperature of the droplets and to improve the temperature uniformity. To precisely ascertain the temperature uniformity, we have used a non-contact method based on infrared thermography so as not to interfere with the system. We then have tested the temperature uniformity as a function of several parameters and compare with a classical Rayleigh surface acoustic wave device.