Electrowetting: from basics to applications

Electrowetting has become one of the most widely used tools for manipulating tiny amounts of liquids on surfaces. Applications range from 'lab-on-a-chip' devices to adjustable lenses and new kinds of electronic displays. In the present article, we review the recent progress in this rapidly growing field including both fundamental and applied aspects. We compare the various approaches used to derive the basic electrowetting equation, which has been shown to be very reliable as long as the applied voltage is not too high. We discuss in detail the origin of the electrostatic forces that induce both contact angle reduction and the motion of entire droplets. We examine the limitations of the electrowetting equation and present a variety of recent extensions to the theory that account for distortions of the liquid surface due to local electric fields, for the finite penetration depth of electric fields into the liquid, as well as for finite conductivity effects in the presence of AC voltage. The most prominent failure of the electrowetting equation, namely the saturation of the contact angle at high voltage, is discussed in a separate section. Recent work in this direction indicates that a variety of distinct physical effects¿rather than a unique one¿are responsible for the saturation phenomenon, depending on experimental details. In the presence of suitable electrode patterns or topographic structures on the substrate surface, variations of the contact angle can give rise not only to continuous changes of the droplet shape, but also to discontinuous morphological transitions between distinct liquid morphologies. The dynamics of electrowetting are discussed briefly. Finally, we give an overview of recent work aimed at commercial applications, in particular in the fields of adjustable lenses, display technology, fibre optics, and biotechnology-related microfluidic devices

Electrohydrodynamic Simulations of Capsule Deformation Using a Dual Time-Stepping Lattice Boltzmann Scheme

Capsules are fluid-filled, elastic membranes that serve as a useful model for synthetic and biological membranes. One prominent application of capsules is their use in modeling the response of red blood cells to external forces. These models can be used to study the cell’s material properties and can also assist in the development of diagnostic equipment. In this work we develop a three dimensional model for numerical simulations of red blood cells under the combined influence of hydrodynamic and electrical forces. The red blood cell is modeled as a biconcave-shaped capsule suspended in an ambient fluid domain. Cell deformation occurs due to fluid motion and electrical forces that arise due to differences in the electrical properties between the internal fluid, external fluid, and cell membrane. The electrostatic equations are solved using the immersed interface method. A finite element method is used to compute the membrane’s elastic forces and the membrane’s bending resistance is described by the Helfrich bending energy functional. The membrane forces are coupled to the fluid equations through the immersed boundary method, where the elastic, bending, and electric forces appear as force densities in the Navier-Stokes equations. The fluid equations are solved using a novel dual time-stepping (DTS) lattice Boltzmann method (LBM), which decouples the fluid and capsule discretizations. The computational efficiency of the DTS scheme is studied for capsules in shear flow where it is found that the newly proposed scheme decreases computational time by a factor of 10 when compared to the standard LBM capsule model. The method is then used to study the dynamics of spherical and biconcave capsules in a combined shear flow and DC electric field. For spherical capsules the effect of field strength, shear rate, membrane capacitance, and membrane conductance are studied. For biconcave capsules the effect of the electric field on the tumbling and tank-treading modes of biconcave capsules is discussed

Electrohydrodynamic Simulations of the Deformation of Liquid-Filled Capsules

A comprehensive two- and three-dimensional framework for the electrohydrodynamic simulation of deformable capsules is provided. The role of a direct current (DC) electric field on the deformation and orientation of a liquid-filled capsule is thoroughly considered numerically. This framework is based on lattice Boltzmann method for the fluid, finite element method for the membrane structure of the capsule, fast immersed interface method for the electric field and immersed boundary method being used to consider the fluid-structure-electric interaction. Under the effect of electric field, two different types of equilibrium states, prolate or oblate are obtained. The numerical algorithm is also applied to study the interfacial tension droplet and red blood cell under shear flow. The capsules are more deformed and arrive at equilibrium status more quickly under stronger electric field. Bending stiffness will suppress the deformation and cause transition from tank-treading to tumbling for the red blood cell. However, the applied electric field will slow down the transition from tank-treading to the tumbling motion or even stay in the tank-treading motion with stronger electric field

O(N) continuous electrostatics solvation energies calculation method for biomolecules simulations

We report a development of a new fast surface-based method for numerical calculations of solvation energy of biomolecules with a large number of charged groups. The procedure scales linearly with the system size both in time and memory requirements, is only a few percent wrong for any molecular configurations of arbitrary sizes, gives explicit value for the reaction field potential at any point, provides both the solvation energy and its derivatives suitable for Molecular Dynamics simulations. The method works well both for large and small molecules and thus gives stable energy differences for quantities such as solvation energies of molecular complex formation.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, more results, examples and references adde

Methods of Preparation and Characterization of Experimental Field-Emission Cathodes

Téma doktorské práce se zabývá přípravou a popisem katod na bázi autoemise, jenž představují kvalitní a levný elektronový zdroj pro zařízení pracující s fokusovaným elektronovým svazkem. Pro přípravu kompozitní autoemisní katody byla využita elektrochemická metoda výroby. Kompozitní struktura katody zlepšuje proudovou stabilitu ve srovnání s čistě autoemisními katodami na bázi wolframu. Na základě charakterizace katody, jenž byla nově provedena metodou šumové spektroskopie, byla implementována technologická zlepšení stávající výroby. Metoda šumové spektroskopie je založena na analýze emisního proudu v časové a kmitočtové rovině, ale především poskytuje informace o nosiči náboje, o jeho pohyblivosti a dále o životnosti katody. Výsledky experimentální části byly rozšířeny teoretickými simulacemi, vedoucími k návrhu metodiky charakterizace vylepšené autoemisní katody.This PhD thesis describes, and covers the preparation of field-emission cathodes that represent a high-quality, inexpensive source of electrons for devices that work with a focused electron beam. In this work, an improved method of electrochemical fabrication is used for the preparation of a composite field-emission cathode. The composite structure improves current stability in comparison to tungsten-based pure field-emission cathodes. Improvements to the technology used were implemented on the basis of findings obtained using spectrum noise diagnostics, which are based on measuring and evaluating the emission current in the time and in frequency domains. Additionally, noise spectroscopy provides important information about charge transport, electron mobility, and lifespan, which is essential for future research. Results obtained using the experimental method have been further supplemented with theoretical data provided by a computer simulation in order to establish characterization procedures for improved field-emission cathodes.

A Method for Geometry Optimization in a Simple Model of Two-Dimensional Heat Transfer

This investigation is motivated by the problem of optimal design of cooling elements in modern battery systems. We consider a simple model of two-dimensional steady-state heat conduction described by elliptic partial differential equations and involving a one-dimensional cooling element represented by a contour on which interface boundary conditions are specified. The problem consists in finding an optimal shape of the cooling element which will ensure that the solution in a given region is close (in the least squares sense) to some prescribed target distribution. We formulate this problem as PDE-constrained optimization and the locally optimal contour shapes are found using a gradient-based descent algorithm in which the Sobolev shape gradients are obtained using methods of the shape-differential calculus. The main novelty of this work is an accurate and efficient approach to the evaluation of the shape gradients based on a boundary-integral formulation which exploits certain analytical properties of the solution and does not require grids adapted to the contour. This approach is thoroughly validated and optimization results obtained in different test problems exhibit nontrivial shapes of the computed optimal contours.Comment: Accepted for publication in "SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing" (31 pages, 9 figures