Bamboo-shaped pumpless platform for long-distance and lossless droplet transport

Abstract

Controllable droplet manipulation is of great importance in the transport of liquid on various lab-on-a-chip devices. Droplet transport on the wettability surfaces has been widely developed, but it remains challenging to reduce its energy consumption, liquid loss and to overcoming the limits of transport distance. Here, we designed a novel bamboo-shaped pumpless platform (BSPP) consisting of a superhydrophobic background and a hydrophilic orbit. In BSPP, the driving force of droplet generated by the guide line can overcome the node pegging resistance to obtain droplet peristaltic advance and achieve long-distance transportation, enabling pumpless and lossless transport by significantly reducing the droplet's contact area with the transport platform. Our experimental and theoretical results indicate that the droplet transport velocity and distance are controlled by both the structural parameters of BSPP and droplet morphology, the maximum transport velocity and transport distance of BSPP were 74.13 ± 1.74 mm/s and 120 mm.