296 results about "Electrowetting" patented technology

Devices utilize elements carried by a fluid in a microchannel toswitch, attenuate, shutter, filter, or phase shift optical signals. In certain embodiments, a microchannel carries a gaseous or liquid slug that interacts with at least a portion of the optical power of an optical signal traveling through a waveguide. The microchannel may form part of the cladding of the waveguide, part of the core and the cladding, or part of the core only. The microchannel may also have ends or may be configured as a loop or continuous channel. The fluid devices may be self-latching or may be semi-latching. The fluid in the microchannel is moved using e.g., e.g., electrocapillarity, differential-pressure electrocapillarity, electrowetting, continuous electrowetting, electrophoresis, electroosmosis, dielectrophoresis, electro-hydrodynamic electrohydrodynamic pumping, magneto-hydrodynamic magnetohydrodynamic pumping, thermocapillarity, thermal expansion, dielectric pumping, and/or variable dielectric pumping.

The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for the characterization and/or the counting of particles by means of non uniform, time variable force fields and integrated optical or impedance meter sensors. The force fields can be of positive or negative dielectrophoresis, electrophoresis or electro-hydrodynamic motions, characterized by a set of stable equilibrium points for the particles (solid, liquid or gaseous); the same method is suitable for the manipulation of droplets (liquid particles) by exploiting effects known to the international scientific community with the name of Electro-wetting on dielectric. The aim of the present invention is to act on the control of the position of each particle which is present in the sample, for the purpose of displacing such particles in a deterministic or statistical way, in order to detect their presence with the integrated optical or impedance meter sensors and/or characterize their type, for the purpose of counting or manipulating them in an efficient way.

A compact and substantially achromatic optical lens system (100, 200) comprising an electrowetting lens (104, 204) is provided. The optical lens system is using an electrowetting lens in which at least one of the entrance window surface (117, 217) or exit window surfaces (219), being in contact with one of the fluids (112, 212, 113, 213), has a curvature. When the sign of the curvature of that surface has the same sign as the curvature of the meniscus when no voltage is applied, a low building height is achieved. The optical element (104, 204) not only acts as a focussing or zooming device, but that it also acts as an aberration reduction element for the other elements in the optical lens system (100, 200).

An electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) device which includes a plurality of array elements configured to manipulate one or more droplets of fluid on an array, each of the array elements including a corresponding array element driver circuit, wherein each array element driver circuit includes: a top substrate electrode and a first drive electrode between which the one or more droplets may be positioned, the top substrate electrode being formed on a top substrate, and the first drive electrode being formed on a lower substrate; and circuitry configured to selectively provide drive voltages to the first drive electrode to move the one or more droplets among the plurality of array elements, and wherein at least one of the plurality of array elements includes: a heater element also formed on the lower substrate and configured to heat the one or more droplets when positioned between the top substrate electrode and the first drive electrode of the at least one array element; and circuitry configured to control the heater element.

A display device for driving liquid drops to move on the basis of an electrowetting effect is characterized by comprising a lower substrate, an electrode plate, a nano-metal grating, a plurality of liquid drops, a super-hydrophobic coating layer, a dielectric layer, an electrode array and an upper substrate in sequence from bottom to top. A cofferdam is added on the periphery between the upper substrate and the lower substrate to form a sealed chamber, the chamber is filled with a second fluid insoluble with the liquid drops, and the single liquid drops in a chamber between the electrode array and the electrode plate which are parallel to each other at least cover two adjacent electrodes of the electrode array. The characteristic that the nano-metal grating is extremely sensitive to changes of the refractive index of an adjacent material is utilized, color filtering is finished by changing the material refractive index, active modulation of transmission and reflection spectrums of the nano-metal grating is achieved, and simultaneously due to the hydrophobic characteristic of the nano-metal grating structure, the electrowetting display modulation contrast and speed can be improved.

A method of droplet manipulation utilizing a droplet manipulation device includes activating elements of the device to bring a first droplet into proximity of a second droplet, controlling the elements of the device to alter the shape of at least one of the first and second droplets, and further controlling the elements of the device to move at least one of the first or second droplets until the droplets are in contact about an aggregate area. The elements are controlled in a manner so as to control the area of contact and the degree of mixing of the fluid between the first and second droplets. The method may be employed to move particles of a particulate suspension from the first droplet to the second droplet. The droplet manipulation device may be an electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) device, which includes shaping electrodes activated to shape droplets, and a bridging electrode activated to join the droplets to transfer fluid between the shaped droplets

The invention relates to an electro-wetting display and a manufacturing method thereof. The electro-wetting display comprises a first substrate, a second substrate, a plurality of isolation walls arranged on the first substrate in a grid form, a plurality of pixel electrodes, lightproof masking fluid and various dyeing fluids of different colors. The minimum region structured by the adjacent isolation walls defines a sub-pixel unit. The pixel electrodes are arranged on the second substrate correspondingly to the sub-pixel units. The lightproof masking fluid fills in the sub-pixel units, and each dyeing fluid is the mixed solution of the transparent conductive solution and water-soluble dyes or water-soluble pigments; the mixed solution is incompatible with the masking fluid; all the mixed solutions respectively fill in the sub-pixel units. The incident rays from any substrate are filtered by the dyeing fluids. The electro-wetting display and the manufacturing method thereof can realize full-color display and the manufacturing cost is lower, and manufacturing method is also simpler.

The disclosure provides an electrowetting display device. The electrowetting display device includes a first substrate and a second substrate disposed to each other. A first electrode layer may dispose on the first substrate. A second electrode layer may dispose on the second substrate. A hydrophobic dielectric layer is disposed on the first electrode layer. A first pixel rib is disposed on the first substrate. A second pixel rib is disposed on the first pixel rib. A water contact angle of the second pixel rib may be larger than that of the first pixel rib. A first liquid and a second liquid may be disposed in between the first substrate and the second substrate. The electrowetting display device can prevent the problem of an existing electrowetting display device that the second liquid with large injection amount will contract to generate overflow, can also improve uniformity after panel drive and reliability of panel operation without affecting contrast ratio of the electrowetting display device.

The invention discloses a method for improving the packaging performance of an electrowetting device and the electrowetting device. A layer of attaching material good in hydrophobicity is arranged on the surfaces of pixel walls of a packaging attaching area, the problems that when a high-hydrophilic material is adopted to prepare the pixel walls to avoid the ink jumping phenomenon, the attaching performance of a rubber frame and the pixel walls is poor, and the packaging sealing performance is not good can be solved, an obtained packaging device is more reliable in quality, ink jumping is avoided, and the packaging sealing performance is guaranteed. Furthermore, the attaching material can cover the intersection of the longitudinal pixel walls and the transverse pixel walls, supporting columns are formed, and a series of display problems caused when base plates are bent due to gravity or stress are prevented. The method is simple in technology, low in cost and easy to control, and the obtained electrowetting device has superior packaging performance.

The invention relates to a large-aspect-ratio microstructure transfer printing method. According to the method, the template with the convex micro-nano structure is used as a mother mold, the liquid polydimethylsiloxane(PDMS) is poured to the mother mold, and heating is carried out to manufacture the PDMS soft die; a liquid conductive material is filled into the groove of the PDMS soft die throughan electric wetting auxiliary scraping and coating mode, and the conductive material is pre-cured at a certain temperature; the conductive material is transferred to the target substrate through a UVauxiliary transfer printing technology; the conductive structure on the target substrate is further processed to obtain the conductive structure which is good in consistency, high in precision and excellent in electric conduction performance.

The invention discloses an electrowetting display unit which is prepared by taking a PCB (Printed Circuit Board) as a substrate and a preparation method of the electrowetting display unit, and meanwhile provides a large-size outdoor display screen technology, wherein the PCB is adopted as the substrate, an electrowetting display unit array is prepared on the PCB, integral control is carried out on pixels in each unit by impressed voltage, each unit is separately controlled by the impressed voltage, each PCB with the display array is used as a splicing unit, and a large-size outdoor display screen is formed by splicing the splicing units. The wiring and assembling errors are greatly reduced by the PCBs, and the automation level and the production labor efficiency are improved. The PCBs are adopted as the substrates of the electrowetting display units, a bottom electrode is directly provided, and a lead used for directly driving the pixels can be led out from the inner layer through utilizing a multi-layer PCB manufacturing technology. The large-size outdoor display screen which is spliced by the display unit arrays based on the PCBs can greatly reduce the energy consumption of the current outdoor LED screen. In addition, the cost is low as the PCBs are adopted.

Microfluidic devices having an electrowetting configuration and an optimized droplet actuation surface are provided for processing biological cells, e.g., for use in nucleic acid library preparation and/or synthesis (including amplification). The devices include a dielectric layer, a hydrophobic layer covalently bonded to the dielectric layer, and a first electrode. Methods of nucleic acid library preparation and/or synthesis can involve providing reagents to cells or nucleic acids by merging appropriate droplets on a droplet actuation surface within a water-immiscible organic liquid and can be performed in the presence of appropriate surfactants. The hydrophobic layer features self-associating molecules covalently bonded to a surface of the dielectric layer in a manner that produces a densely-packed monolayer that resists intercalation and or penetration by polar molecules or species. Also provided are systems for temperature control of the microfluidic device during nucleic acid library preparation and/or synthesis which can reduce temperature overshooting during heating and cooling steps.

The invention relates to a device (102) arranged for measuring a geometry of a fluid meniscus (132). The device comprises a fluid chamber (104) storing a first electrically conductive fluid (128) and a second electrically insulating fluid (324). The fluids are mutually immiscible and define a fluid meniscus (132) in between them. Furthermore a main electrowetting electrode (118) and auxiliary electrowetting electrodes (120, 122, 124, 126) are provided for controlling the geometry of the fluid meniscus. Hereto a voltage source (134) for providing a voltage between the main electrowetting electrode and the auxiliary electrowetting electrodes is comprised, as well as a measurement circuit (144) for separately measuring capacitances between the main electrowetting electrode and at least two of the auxiliary electrowetting electrodes. For this purpose the measurement circuit comprises a multiplexer for demodulating a signal indicative for said capacitances. The invention further relates to a method for measuring a fluid meniscus.