The Sandia Digital Microfluidic Hub - a droplet-handling router - enables the interconnection of diverse processing and analysis modules to automate complex microliter-scale molecular biology sample-preparation protocols. 2012-2890P
2:37 - Something tells me pure distilled water can not be moved with this technology? What exactly makes these water droplets move? Electromagnetic field?
I would imagine that this should work on distilled, RO, or milli-Q water. Water is a highly polar molecule, meaning that one end carries a partial positive charge and one end carries a partial negative charge. If you want to conduct electricity, you would want impurities because water does not ionize (If split by electrophoresis it will form non-ionic molecules H2 and O2). But for simple electrostatic attraction to move droplets around, I think that water would make a great candidate.
You guys should take that technology that move water droplets with electricity and put it on the hull of a boat like device. Call it the Skidder and make millions! And send me one so I can play with it.
Marketing. The device is a bit slow. But it can be in principle operated this way, it is just slower. I did see newer devices that somehow are faster, and have similar capabilities.
It is very complicated. I do not support the idea of using electricity, as it is very consumable and requires special types of fluids, in addition to being polluted and not similar to how our bodies work.
