Electromechanics of mesoscale aqueous droplets suspended in oil media

Abstract

The success of cancer immunotherapy is based on the ability to identify, collect, and pair highly potent cancer-killing immune T-cells from a patient with the cancerous cells at the cellular level to determine which immune T-cells kill cancerous cells —a process known as combinatorial study. This work aims to directly address the need for an efficient tool for combinatorial through the design of a droplet-based microchip, which requires understanding the behavior of aqueous droplets in high electric fields. The project objective is to study the dynamics of aqueous droplets suspended in oil subjected to high electric fields via voltage application. Through experiments, the role of fluid properties on droplet behavior is investigated for a range of actuation voltage amplitudes 'V' and frequencies f. Two observations are reported here: the droplets displace more in air than they do in oil due to the viscosity of oil, and as actuation frequency f increases displacement x(t) of droplets decreases due to viscous effects This work will help advance the development of droplet-based technologies such as lab-on-chip platforms.