Controlling Liquid Drops with Texture Ratchets

1. Todd A. Duncombe^1,†,‡, 
2. E. Yegân Erdem^2,†,§, 
3. Ashutosh Shastry^3,†,¶,
4. Rajashree Baskaran⁴, 
5. Karl F. Böhringer^5,*

Article first published online: 14 FEB 2012

Advanced Materials

Volume 24, Issue 12,pages 1545–1550, March 22, 2012

 

Controlled vibration selectively propels multiple microliter-sized drops along microstructured tracks, leading to simple microfluidic systems that rectify oscillations of the three-phase contact line into asymmetric pinning forces that propel each drop in the direction of higher pinning.