ANALYSIS OF ERROR SENSITIVITY OF A SYSTEM FOR ELECTROWETTING FORCE MEASUREMENT

摘要

Electrowetting systems are commonly studied by measuring contact angle changes with applied voltage. However many applications such as digital droplet manipulation require information about the force applied to a drop to improve performance. This paper analyses a previously demonstrated method of measuring the electrowetting forces to estimate the sensitivity of force measurements to potential errors such as droplet evaporation, variation in volume, and alignment accuracy. The most significant force errors are introduced by uncertainty in droplet volume as by evaporation. However, analysis shows that this can be controlled by lowering the measurement tip to compensate for evaporation. Errors in tangential force due to alignment are shown to be small for alignment errors below 1°.