Digital microfluidic (DMF) devices manipulate minuscule droplets through basic fluidic operations including droplet transport, mixing and splitting commonly known as the building blocks for complete laboratory analyses on a single device. A DMF device can house various chemical species and confine chemical reactions within the volume of a droplet much like a micro-reactor. The automation of fluidic protocols requires a feedback controller whose sensor is capable of locating droplets independent of liquid composition (or previous knowledge of liquid composition). In this research, we present an estimator that tracks the continuous displacement of a droplet between electrodes of a DMF device. The estimator uses a dimensionless ratio of two electrode capacitances to approximate the position of a droplet, even, in the domain between two adjacent electrodes. This droplet position estimator significantly enhances the control precision of liquid handling in DMF devices compared to that of the techniques reported in the literature. It captures the continuous displacement of a droplet; valuable information for a feedback controller to execute intricate fluidic protocols including droplet positioning between electrodes, droplet velocity and acceleration control. We propose a state estimator for tracking the continuous droplet displacement between two adjacent electrodes. The dimensionless nature of this estimator means that any droplet composition can be sensed. Thus, no calibration for each chemical species within a single DMF device is required. We present theoretical and experimental results that demonstrate the efficacy of the position estimator in approximating the position of the droplet in the interval between two electrodes.
The effective operation of a digital microfluidic (DMF) device depends on its ability to actuate droplets. Pulse width modulation of actuating signals (DC pulse train actuation) is proposed as a practical digital implementation and enhanced droplet manipulation technique. Experimental and simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of droplet incremental displacement and velocity control by modulating the width of each actuation pulse. This will in turn enable the control of the non-linear droplet transport dynamics to minimize droplet position overshoot, deformation, and fragmentation. As a result, DCPT actuation offers unparalleled control over droplet position and speed in DMF devices.
Design of a closed-loop droplet position control is an essential step towards the development of fully automated digital microfluidic devices. However, the performance of any closed-loop controller is ultimately limited by the accuracy and precision of the feedback sensors. In this paper, an effective capacitance based droplet sensor was designed and optimized through simulation to reduce the droplet position error. A full factorial design was conducted on the droplet sensor simulation model to observe the behavior of the position error as a function of the parameters of a digital microfluidic device. An empirical model was then fitted to the data obtained from the designed simulations and optimized to reduce the position estimate error. Results suggest that the performance of the capacitance based droplet sensor studied in this work is most dependent on the dielectric thickness, droplet radius, electrode pitch, electrode separation, filler fluid permittivity, and plate gap. Isoperformance curves of the sensor performance were obtained using the empirical model to show the interaction between digital microfluidic parameters, as well as to aid in the design of digital microfluidic devices equipped with a similar capacitance based droplet sensor.
Capacitance measurement has been identified as an effective technique for droplet position sensing in digital microfluidic systems mainly due to its non-intrusive nature. In essence, this technique relies on the correlation between the capacitance of two top-bottom electrodes with the amount of droplet overlap on the electrode. This paper describes an experimental setup used to gather capacitance data from a set of electrodes with varying droplet overlap to determine the droplet position. A prototype closed digital microfluidic (DMF) system consisting of an array of electrodes in the form of a 2 × 2 matrix was fabricated. A circular droplet was positioned on the DMF system, and capacitance measurements for each of the four electrodes were taken using a fast data acquisition device. A sufficiently accurate approximation of the droplet position was made using the four capacitance measurements. The paper presents the experimental results and also discusses the sources of error, viability of the experimental setup and manufacturing procedure for use in the development of capacitance measurement droplet position sensing techniques.
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