Hierarchical nanotexturing enables acoustofluidics on slippery yet sticky, flexible surfaces

Tao, Ran, McHale, Glen, Reboud, Julien, Cooper, Jonathan M., Torun, Hamdi, Luo, JingTing, Luo, Jikui, Yang, Xin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8429-7598, Zhou, Jian, Canyelles-Pericas, Pep, Wu, Qiang and Fu, Yongqing 2020. Hierarchical nanotexturing enables acoustofluidics on slippery yet sticky, flexible surfaces. Nano Letters 20 (5) , pp. 3263-3270. 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c00005

Preview

PDF - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution. Download (6MB) | Preview

Abstract

The ability to actuate liquids remains a fundamental challenge in smart microsystems, such as those for soft robotics, where devices often need to conform to either natural or three-dimensional solid shapes, in various orientations. Here, we propose a hierarchical nanotexturing of piezoelectric films as active microfluidic actuators, exploiting a unique combination of both topographical and chemical properties on flexible surfaces, while also introducing design concepts of shear hydrophobicity and tensile hydrophilicity. In doing so, we create nanostructured surfaces that are, at the same time, both slippery (low in-plane pinning) and sticky (high normal-to-plane liquid adhesion). By enabling fluid transportation on such arbitrarily shaped surfaces, we demonstrate efficient fluid motions on inclined, vertical, inverted, or even flexible geometries in three dimensions. Such surfaces can also be deformed and then reformed into their original shapes, thereby paving the way for advanced microfluidic applications.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Engineering
Additional Information:	This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY)License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium,provided the author and source are cited.
Publisher:	American Chemical Society
ISSN:	1530-6984
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	3 December 2020
Date of Acceptance:	1 April 2020
Last Modified:	04 May 2023 08:19
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/136747

Citation Data

Cited 25 times in Scopus. View in Scopus. Powered By Scopus® Data

Actions (repository staff only)

Edit Item