Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2016

DOI

10.3390/mi7120235

Publication Title

Micromachines

Volume

7

Issue

12

Pages

235 (1-13)

Abstract

Fabrication of microchannels and associated electrodes to generate electrokinetic phenomena often involves costly materials and considerable effort. In this study, we used graphite pencil-leads as low cost, disposable 3D electrodes to investigate various electrokinetic phenomena in straight cylindrical microchannels, which were themselves fabricated by using a graphite rod as the microchannel mold. Individual pencil-leads were employed as the micro-electrodes arranged along the side walls of the microchannel. Efficient electrokinetic phenomena provided by the 3D electrodes, including alternating current electroosmosis (ACEO), induced-charge electroosmosis (ICEO), and dielectrophoresis (DEP), were demonstrated by the introduced pencil-lead based microfluidic devices. The electrokinetic phenomena were characterized by micro-particle image velocimetry (micro-PIV) measurements and microscopy imaging. Highly efficient electrokinetic phenomena using 3D pencil-lead electrodes showed the affordability and ease of this technique to fabricate microfluidic devices embedded with electrodes for electrokinetic fluid and particle manipulations. © 2016 by the authors

Comments

This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Original Publication Citation

Bashirzadeh, Y., Maruthamuthu, V., & Qian, S. Z. (2016). Electrokinetic phenomena in pencil lead-based microfluidics. Micromachines, 7(12), 235. doi:10.3390/mi7120235

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