Transportation of a microdroplet on an oriented liquid crystal surface

Abstract

Wetting phenomena play important roles in several technological applications and in many physical and biological thin‐film phenomena, such as wetting, adhesion and friction. One of key issues of these studies is to control the surface energy (or wettability) dynamically for liquid transportation. We have developed a liquid crystal (LC) surface for use as a transport substrate since we expected that the surface energy of an LC surface can be controlled rapidly using an electric field. The rapid control of the polarisability (or wettability) of a liquid crystalline surface by an electric field has been demonstrated, together with the transportation of a liquid microdroplet.

Keywords:

• microdroplet transportation
• surface energy
• comb‐type electrode

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Iketani Science and Technology Foundation.