Loading a High-Viscous Droplet via the Cone-Shaped Liquid Bridge Induced by an Electrostatic Force.

In transfer printing, the loaded droplet on the probe has a significant influence on the dispensing resolution. A suitable loading approach for a high-viscous liquid is highly required. Herein, a novel electrostatic loading method is presented, in which the main aim is to control precisely the formation and breaking of a cone-shaped liquid bridge. An experimental device is developed. The influence of electrical and geometric parameters on the feature size of the liquid bridge is investigated in detail. In the formation of the liquid bridge, the increase of voltage or the decrease of the air gap can enhance the electric field intensity, thus reducing the formation period and increasing the initial cone tip diameter of the liquid cone. After the liquid bridge is formed, both the circuit current implying the liquid wetted area on the probe surface and the lifting velocity of the probe are utilized to further regulate the volume of the loaded droplet. Loaded droplets ranging from 60 to 600 pL are obtained via the method with a standard deviation of 4 to 30 pL. Moreover, a dot array is transferred with different loaded droplets. The minimum diameter of the printed dots is about 140 µm with a variation less than 5%. The advantages include the reduced risk of contamination, the droplet-size independent of the size of the probe, and the low cost of the device.

Stretching breakup of a conical liquid bridge with a moving contact line.

The stretching breakup of a conical liquid bridge is the core process of micro-dispensing. To precisely control the droplet loading and improve the dispensing resolution, a detailed study of bridge breakup with a moving contact line is required. A conical liquid bridge is established by an electric field and stretching breakup is investigated here. The effect of contact line state is investigated by examining the pressure at the symmetry axis. Compared to the pinned case, the moving contact line causes a shift of the pressure maximum from the bridge neck to top, and it facilitates the evacuation of the bridge top. For the moving case, factors affecting the contact line motion are then considered. The results show that the increase of the stretching velocity U and the decrease of the initial top radius R top accelerate the contact line motion. And the amount of contact line movement is basically constant. To analyze the influence of the moving contact line on bridge breakup, neck evolution is tracked under different U. An increase of U decreases the breakup time and increases the breakup position. Based on the breakup position and the remnant radius, the influences of U and R top on remnant volume V d are examined. It is found that V d decreases with an increase of U and increases with an increase of R top. Accordingly, different sizes of remnant volume can be obtained by adjusting U and R top. This is helpful for the optimization of liquid loading for transfer printing.

Activation or sequestration of heavy metals during hydrothermal process of swine manure: Interactions among metal species and particulates.

Whether the heavy metals in solid biomass is activated or sequestrated during hydrothermal process (HTP) is still debated. Herein, the speciation of light and heavy metals during HTP of swine manure (SM) was investigated to reveal the interactions among these metal species and specific particulates. With increasing temperature, most of exchangeable species and that bound to carbonates were released to liquid phase via ion exchange and acid dissolution. Dissociation of Fe-Mn oxides rarely happened in spite of anoxic atmosphere formed during HTP. Substantial decomposition of lignocelluloses hardly caused significant liberation of fraction bound to organics. Instead, a part of fraction in liquid phase was re-captured by new oxygen-containing functional groups on solid product surface to form fraction bound to organics. Donpeacorite, butschliite and iwakiite were formed as primary minerals, resulting in increase of residual fraction of all metals except for K and Mg at 250 °C. In summary, Cu, Zn and Pb species evolution was affected by speciation of K, Ca, Mg, Fe and Mn significantly. Cu, Zn, Pb, Fe, Mn and Ca were sequestrated whereas K and Mg were activated with enhancing temperature during HTP in terms of their mobility factors.

Microchannel refill: a new method for fabricating 2D nanochannels in polymer substrates.

In this paper, we present a new approach that is capable of fabricating nanochannels in a poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) substrate. This method, which we call microchannel refill (MR), utilizes the refilling of glassy thermoplastics under thermal compression to reduce a microscopic channel to a nanochannel. It only has two main steps. First, a microchannel is fabricated in a PMMA substrate using normal hot embossing. Second, the microchannel is compressed under a certain temperature and pressure to obtain a nanochannel. We show that a nanochannel with a width as small as 132 nm (with a depth of 85 nm) can be easily produced by choosing the appropriate compression temperature, compression pressure, original microchannel width and original microchannel aspect ratio. Compared with most current nanochannel fabrication methods, MR is a quick, simple and cost-effective way to produce nanochannels in polymer substrates.

A bio-inspired micropump based on stomatal transpiration in plants.

Stomatal transpiration, which is an efficient way to carry water from the roots up to the leaves, can be described by "diameter-law". According to the law, the flow rate induced by micropore transpiration far exceeded that induced by macroscale evaporation, and it can be controlled by opening (or closing) some micropores. In this research, a bio-inspired micropump based on stomatal transpiration is presented. The micropump is composed of three layers: the top layer is a 93 µm-thick PVC (polyvinylchloride) film with a group of slit-like micropores; the second layer is a PMMA sheet with adhesives to join the other two layers together; the third layer is a microporous membrane. Using this pump, controllable flow rates of 0.13-3.74 µl min(-1) can be obtained. This micropump features high and adjustable flow-rates, simple structure and low fabrication cost. It can be used as a "plug and play" fluid-driven unit without any external power sources and equipment.

Fracture mechanism of metal electrode integrated on a chip and fabrication of a poly(ethylene terephthalate) electrophoresis microchip.

Thermal bonding is an important technique to fabricate polymer electrophoresis microchip. However, the metal electrodes deposited on polymer substrate can readily fracture during the thermal bonding. In this paper, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) was exploited to fabricate the electrophoresis microchip with an integrated gold electrode for amperometric detection. The fracture of the gold electrode was studied through FEA (finite element analysis) simulations, the potentially risk positions on the electrode were shown. The calculation results were tested by bonding experiments and were proven to be consistent with the experiments. Besides, an optimal bonding temperature for PET chip was also presented based on FEA simulations and bonding experiments. Considering the low surface properties of PET, oxygen plasma-assisted thermal bonding technique was used to enhance bonding. Upon treated for 150 s, the PET substrates could be thermally bonded at 62 degrees C without electrode fracture. The fabricated PET chips were demonstrated for detection of standard glucose solution. Satisfactory reproducibility was achieved, and the RSD values of peak height and migration time of the PET CE chips were 0.51% and 2.17%, respectively.