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Updated: May 23, 2025

Taking Advantage of Reduced Droplet-surface Interaction to Optimize Transport of Bioanalytes in Digital Microfluidics
Published on: November 10, 2014
Self-powered droplet manipulation for full human-droplet interaction in multiple mediums
Jianfeng Sun1, Qing Zhao2, Zeng Mo3
1College of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Chongqing Normal University, Chongqing, China.
Abstract:
Droplet manipulation holds significant promise across the energy, environmental, and medical fields. However, current methods still lack a solution that simultaneously satisfies the requirements for self-powered energy supply, high efficiency, human-droplet interaction, flexibility, and universality. Herein, we develop a human-droplet interaction platform based on an omni-directional triboelectric tweezer, which directly utilizes triboelectric charges induced by human motion to manipulate droplets. The omni-directional triboelectric tweezer produces the charges and electric field necessary for droplet control through simple sliding motions, thereby eliminating conventional dependencies on power source and complex electrode arrays. Moreover, its omni-directional operation capability further enhances the flexibility and precision of droplet manipulation. Our approach demonstrates effective droplet manipulation in both gas and liquid phases through hand movements, enabling a range of operations such as efficient transportation, precise anchoring, flexible steering, merging chemical reactions, and drug extraction, showcasing its comprehensive application capabilities.

