Liquid metal enabled pump

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1319878111
• Publication Date: 2014-02-19T01:52:24Z
• Authors: Shi-Yang Tang; Khashayar Khoshma...; Vijay Sivan; Phred Petersen; Anthony P. O’Mullane; Derek Abbott; Arnan Mitchell; Kourosh Kalantar-...
• Keywords: Liquid metal; Liquid flow

Small-scale pumps will be the heartbeat of many future micro/nanoscale platforms. However, integration small-scale is presently hampered by limited flow rate with respect to input power, and their rather complicated fabrication processes. These issues arise as conventional pumping effects require intricate moving elements. Here, we demonstrate a system that call liquid metal enabled pump, for driving range liquids without mechanical parts, upon application modest electric field. This pump incorporates droplet metal, which induces at high rates, yet exceptionally low power consumption electrowetting/deelectrowetting surface. We present theory explaining this mechanism show operation fundamentally different from other existing pumps. The presented both efficient simple, thus has potential advance field microfluidics.