Electrowetting Enables New Capabilities for Lab-On-Chip, Optics, E-Paper, and Beyond… (NIMSA Seminar)

Electrowetting uses electromechanical force to reduce the apparent contact angle of a conducting fluid on a hydrophobic dielectric surface. In the past 5-10 years there has been an explosion of applications for electrowetting, rooted in the medical, chemical, and engineering sciences. This talk begins with the fundamentals of electrowetting actuation, include non-ideal effects and the latest understanding of the factors that cause them. Recent electrowetting materials advances have been significant, and important topics related to achieving reliable operation are presented. In addition, this talk reviews electrowetting device demonstrations for lab-on-chip, optics, displays, and other emerging applications. Electrowetting is an exciting and robust field of research and commercialization, into which numerous disciplines can rapidly get involved.
Jason Heikenfeld received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cincinnati in 1998 and 2001, respectively. During 2001-2005 Dr. Heikenfeld co-founded and served as principal scientist at Extreme Photonix Corp. In 2005 he returned to the University of Cincinnati as a Professor in the School of Electronic and Computing Systems. Dr. Heikenfeld's university laboratory, The Novel Devices Laboratory www.ece.uc.edu/devices, is currently engaged in electrofluidic device research for beam steering, lab-on-chip, displays, and electronic paper. He has greater than 100 publications, has presented numerous invited talks, and his inventions have resulted in over a dozen pending or granted patents. In March of 2010 Dr. Heikenfeld authored the cover article for IEEE Spectrum "Lite, Brite, Displays', and he is a regular commentator in IEEE Spectrum articles related to displays. He is an NSF CAREER and AFOSR Young Investigator.