Professor Alan Cheng Hou Tsang of the Department of Mechanical Engineering and his student Jiaqi Miao have recently designed novel reconfigurable rectifers with magnetized microratchets for liquid manipulation. The morphologies of the rectifiers can be reconfigured using programmed magnetic field to harness interfacial energy to control versatile liquid behaviors. The research was recently published in Advanced Science on Oct 23, 2024 and it was featured on the inside front cover of the journal.
J. Miao, and A. C. H. Tsang . Reconfigurability‐Encoded Hierarchical Rectifiers for Versatile 3D Liquid Manipulation. Advanced Science, 11, 2405641, 2024.
Abstract
Manipulating small-volume liquids is crucial in natural processes and industrial applications. However, most liquid manipulation technologies involve complex energy inputs or non-adjustable wetting gradient surfaces. Here, a simple and adjustable 3D liquid manipulation paradigm is reported tocontrol liquid behaviors by coupling liquid–air–solid interfacial energy with programmable magnetic fields. This paradigm centers around a hierarchical rectifier with magnetized microratchets, using Laplace pressure asymmetry to enable multimodal directional steering of various surface tension liquids (23–72 mN m−1). The scale-dependent effect in microratchet design shows its superiority in handling small-volume liquids across three orders of magnitude (100–103 μL). Under programmed magnetic fields, the rectifier can reconfigure its morphology to harness interfacial energy to exhibit richer liquid behaviors without dynamic real-time control. Reconfigured rectifiers show improved rectification performance in the inertia-dominant fluid regime, i.e., a remarkable 2000-fold increase in the critical Weber number for pure ethanol. Moreover, the rectifier’s switchable reconfigurations offer flexible control over liquid transport directions and spatiotemporally controllable 3D liquid manipulation reminiscent of inchworm motions. This scalable liquid manipulation paradigm promotes versatile engineering and biochemistry applications, e.g., portable liquid purity testing (screening resolution <1 mN m−1), logical open-channel microfluidics, and automated chemical reaction platforms.
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