Droplet dispensing and splitting by electrowetting on dielectric digital microfluidics

The present study investigates two essential capabilities of electrowetting on dielectric digital microfluidics - 1) high precision and consistency in volume of a unit nanodrop dispensed from a reservoir, and 2) reduction of time to dispense and split drops. These capabilities are sought in applications that need tiny but accurate volume of liquid delivery at high flow rate. For this purpose, we mainly focused on geometry of electrodes and developed novel shapes and arrangements of electrodes in electrowetting on dielectric microfluidic device. To dispense liquid droplets in higher volume precision and consistency, a novel reservoir design named TCC reservoir is introduced. To reduce time to dispense a droplet, L-junction is developed. Y-junction is designed to split a droplet into two at the same speed as droplet dispensing speed by the L-junction, and hence increase the number of droplets arrive to the target area (i.e. at high frequency delivery).