High Performance P(VDF-TrFE-CFE) Terpolymer for BioMEMs and Microfluidic Devices

Abstract

ABSTRACTBioMEMs and microfluidic devices have gained a lot of attention in recent years due to their emerging applications in biochemical analysis, medical diagnosis, chemical analysis and synthesis, drug discovery and drug delivery, biosensing and biomimetic systems. The materials requirements for bioMEMs are biocompatible, chemically modifiable, easy to fabricate, economic, compliable and smart. Among various materials, the electroactive polymeric materials can best meet these requirements. Recently, we developed a group of poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) P(VDF-TrFE) based terpolymers which have very high strain level and high energy density. The longitudinal and transverse strain of these materials can reach about –7% and 4.5%, and the elastic energy density is around 1.1 J/cm3, which are very attractive for the development of polymeric pump, valve and other microfluidic components for all polymer-based bioMEMs and microfluidic integrated system. This paper reports on the recent efforts on the optimization of the terpolymer performance and development of microfluidic components using the electroactive terpolymers for bioMEMs.