Electrically actuated artificial cilia for microfluidic applications

Animals use two main platforms for fluid transport: pressure driven flows through vascular networks and cilial transport. Microfluidics mimics the first strategy. We still don’t have good platforms for mimicking the second strategy. Nevertheless, such a platform is worth pursuing since individually addressable micro-scale robotic cilia could enable unprecedented control over microfluidic environments. For example, they could sort microscale particles, control chemical reactions, and transport viscoelastic materials. Here, we present a new platform for fabricating artificial cilia that uses surface electrochemical actuators made of nm thin Platinum films. Because these actuators are driven asymmetrically via cyclical application of ~0.2 V to the Pt, these robotic cilia can be integrated with control circuits and power sources, allowing for sequential and addressable generation of arbitrary flow patterns. I will present our attempts to make such an artificial cilia chip and integrate it with a data acquisition device to build a microfluidic chip that can generate reconfigurable micro fluidic patterns and is controllable via a computer. We envision that this technology will usher in unparalleled control of complex fluids moving over surfaces.