Microfluidics and Nanofluidics

, Volume 3, Issue 5, pp 571–579 | Cite as

Kinematics and deformation of ferrofluid droplets under magnetic actuation

  • Nam-Trung Nguyen
  • Ali Beyzavi
  • Kon Meng Ng
  • Xiaoyang Huang
Research Paper
First Online:
Received:
Accepted:

Abstract

This paper reports the experimental results on kinematics and deformation of ferrofluid droplets driven by planar coils. Ferrofluid droplets act as liquid magnets, which can be controlled and manipulated by an external magnetic field. In our experiments, the magnetic field was generated by two pairs of planar coils, which were fabricated on a double-sided printed circuit board. The first pair of coils constrains the ferrofluid droplet to a one-dimensional motion. The second pair generates the magnetic gradient needed for the droplet motion. The direction of the motion can be controlled by changing the sign of the gradient or of the driving current. Kinematic characteristics of the droplet such as the velocity–position diagram and the aspect ratio of the droplet are investigated. The analysis and discussion are based on the different parameters such as the droplet size, the viscosity of the surrounding medium, and the driving current. This simple actuation concept would allow the implementation of lab-on-a-chip platforms based on ferrofluid droplets.

Keywords

Magnetic Force Print Circuit Board Virtual Channel Droplet Velocity Driving Current 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Notes

Acknowledgments

N. T. Nguyen would like to thank the Agency of Science, Technology and Research, Singapore (A*Star, SERC grant No. 0521010108 ‘Droplet-based micro/nanofluidics’), for its financial support. A. Beyzavi thanks the Nanyang Technological University for a research scholarship. The authors thank Mr. Jiao Zhenjun for his help with the droplet tracking program.

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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag 2007

Authors and Affiliations

  • Nam-Trung Nguyen
    • 1
  • Ali Beyzavi
    • 1
  • Kon Meng Ng
    • 1
  • Xiaoyang Huang
    • 1
  1. 1.School of Mechanical and Aerospace EngineeringNanyang Technological UniversitySingaporeSingapore

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