An improved crescent electrode in electrowetting-based microfludic

Abstract

Electrode is a vital component in the digital microfludic based on electrowetting on dielectric(EWOD), in order to improve the driving performance, this paper proposed a novel improved crescent electrode shape, establish the EWOD device model through the finite element method(FEM) to compute the driving force of the droplet. The result shows that droplet's electrostatic force on the proposed electrode shape is more stable, the standard deviation is decreased by 41.18% compared with the crescent electrode, and during droplet crossing two adjacent electrodes, the minimum actuation force of droplet on the proposed electrode is 5.9μN which is improved by 23.43% compared with the crescent electrode. And in addition, the proposed electrode is composed of two symmetrical sub electrodes, hence the droplet bidirectional movement has the same driving performance, it is more consistent with the manipulation of droplet in practical application.