Droplet Mobility Actuated by Surface Acoustic Wave

Abstract

Droplet mobility actuated by surface acoustic wave (SAW) was demonstrated in this paper. On the surface of the LiNBO3substrate, pairs of copper inter-digital transducer (IDT) were fabricated to generate Rayleigh wave at different radio frequency (RF) voltages. The various droplet motions, such as mixing, flowing and atomization were analyzed by adjusting pulse frequency and input power. The experimental results demonstrated that the SAW could function as an atomizer when the input power was higher than 25W. Based on fundamental experiments, a novel driving curve for micro droplets under different driving power was obtained as well.