Electromagnetic Digital Microactuators Remote Control by a Parallel Dual Wavelength Optical Communication System

International audienceIn this paper, a parallel dual wavelength optical communication channel is presented. A custom optical sensor based on a double Fabry-Perot structure is described. It allows the system to instantaneously demultiplex the incident wavelengths as well as offers noise rejection, such as ambient light. It allows sending two bits in only one pulse of light. Contrary to other optical approaches, the presented approach differs in that it uses a wide optical spectrum and only inexpensive electronics. The usefulness of this free space, point-to-point, communication channel is demonstrated in the remote control of an electromagnetic digital microactuator. Thanks to a proper algorithm in the receiver, the proposed system is able to control all the degrees of freedom of the microactuator with a movement for every pulse of light

Filter-less submicron hydrodynamic size sorting

International audienceWe propose a simple microfluidic device able to separate submicron particles (critical size ~0.1 µm) from a complex sample with no filter (minimum channel dimension being 5 µm), by hydrodynamic filtration. A model taking into account the actual velocity profile and hydrodynamic resistances enables predicting the chip sorting properties for any geometry. Two design families are studied to obtain (i) small sizes within minutes (low-aspect ratio, two-level chip) and (ii) micron-sized sorting with µL flowrate (3D architecture based on lamination). We obtain quantitative agreement of sorting performances both with experiments and with numerical solving, and determine the limits of the approach. We therefore demonstrate a passive, filter-less sub-micron size sorting with simple, robust, easy to fabricate design