Abstract
A microfluidic manipulation system that can sense a liquid and control its flow is highly desirable. However, conventional sensors and motors have difficulty fitting the limited space in microfluidic devices; moreover, fast sensing and actuation are required because of the fast liquid flow in the hollow fibre. In this study, fast torsional and tensile actuators were developed using hollow fibres employing spiral nonlinear stress, which can sense the fluid temperature and sort the fluid into the desired vessels. The fluid-driven actuation exhibited a highly increased response speed (27 times as fast as that of air-driven actuation) and increased power density (90 times that of an air-driven solid fibre actuator). A 0.5 K fluid temperature fluctuation produced a 20° rotation of the hollow fibre. These high performances originated from increments in both heat transfer and the average bias angle, which was understood through theoretical analysis. This work provides a new design strategy for intelligent microfluidics and inspiration for soft robots and smart devices for biological, optical, or magnetic applications.
Highlights
A microfluidic manipulation system that can sense a liquid and control its flow is highly desirable
The polyethylene hollow fibres (PEHFs) expands in the radial direction and contracts in the length direction[58]
As different sheath thicknesses of hollow fibres is generally used in microfluidics, we investigated the actuation performance as a function of the sheath thickness
Summary
A microfluidic manipulation system that can sense a liquid and control its flow is highly desirable. When the fibre sheath is heated by the flowing hot liquid, the sheath material contracts in the axial direction and expands in the radial direction, causing torsional and tensile actuation for a twisted and a coiled hollowfibre actuator, respectively. The actuation of the hollow fibre in response to a liquid with different temperatures would result in microfluidic position control.
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