Abstract
AC electroosmosis has been extensively used for bulk flow pumping or bioparticles trapping using anisotropic electrode arrays in the recent year. In this paper, we proposes a novel design concept to locally and simultaneously generate in-plane microvortex patterns with clockwise, counter-clockwise, and pairs of co-rotating/counter-rotating vortices actuated by AC electroosmosis in a microchannel. The device is made of a pair of interdigitated electrodes with unequal width for each one located at the bottom of a channel, and under the application of an AC signal of voltage and frequency below 5Vrms and 10kHz, respectively. The rotating speed of microvortex is found to increase with the applied voltage and have an optimal value at an appropriately applied frequency. The potential applications of this device can be readily integrated into a lab-on-a-chip system for fluid mixing and particle manipulation. Copyright © 2005 by the Transducer Research Foundation, Inc.