Behavior of a water drop moving inside parallel plates

摘要

When a digital microfluidic experiment was done the process of droplet moving from single-plate structure (open part) into parallel-plate structure (covered part) was always needed. But it should be noted that it is difficult for big water drops moving into parallel-plate structure with hydrophobic surfaces. But we have recently observed an interesting phenomenon: by repeatedly up and down the upper plate, a small scaled water drop was able to run into the gap of parallel plates with hydrophobic surfaces that were approximately vertically placed. We have analyzed the subtle physical mechanism responsible for droplet transport and demonstrated experimentally. This incident effect of dynamic wetting provides a new method to move droplet and this dynamics of controlling way may be widely used in future application.