Light-driven peristaltic pumping by an actuating splay-bend strip

Klaudia Dradrach; Michał Zmyślony; Zixuan Deng; Arri Priimagi; John Biggins; Piotr Wasylczyk

doi:10.1038/s41467-023-37445-5

Light-driven peristaltic pumping by an actuating splay-bend strip

Klaudia Dradrach^*
, Michał Zmyślony
, Zixuan Deng
, Arri Priimagi
, John Biggins^*
, Piotr Wasylczyk

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

40 Citations (Scopus)

27 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Despite spectacular progress in microfluidics, small-scale liquid manipulation, with few exceptions, is still driven by external pumps and controlled by large-scale valves, increasing cost and size and limiting complexity. By contrast, optofluidics uses light to power, control and monitor liquid manipulation, potentially allowing for small, self-contained microfluidic devices. Here we demonstrate a soft light-propelled actuator made of liquid crystal gel that pumps microlitre volumes of water. The strip of actuating material serves as both a pump and a channel leading to an extremely simple microfluidic architecture that is both powered and controlled by light. The performance of the pump is well explained by a simple theoretical model in which the light-induced bending of the actuator competes with the liquid’s surface tension. The theory highlights that effective pumping requires a threshold light intensity and strip width. The proposed system explores the benefits of shifting the complexity of microfluidic systems from the fabricated device to spatio-temporal control over stimulating light patterns.

Original language	English
Article number	1877
Journal	Nature Communications
Volume	14
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-37445-5
Publication status	Published - Apr 2023
Publication type	A1 Journal article-refereed

Funding

K.D. was supported by grant 2019/03/X/ST7/02065 ("Ciekłokrystaliczne usieciowane polimery jako elementy wykonawcze w układach mikrofluidycznych") from National Science Centre, Poland (NCN), thanks to which she implemented internship in Smart Photonic Materials Group in the Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences at Tampere University, Finland. K.D. and P.W. acknowledge generous funding from the National Science Centre (Poland) within the project 2018/29/B/ST7/00192 “Micro-scale actuators based on photo-responsive polymers". For the development of this project, M.Z. and Z.D. have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 956150. J.B. and K.D. are supported by a UKRI ‘future leaders fellowship’ grant (grant no. MR/S017186/1). A.P. acknowledges the support from the Academy of Finland, in the framework of PREIN Flagship Programme (Decision No. 320165) and the Center of excellence LIBER (Decision No. 346107). Hao Zeng from Tampere University is acknowledged for fruitful discussions on the topic and for supervising K.D. during her internship at Tampere University.

Publication forum classification

Publication forum level 3

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Chemistry
General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
General
General Physics and Astronomy

Access to Document

10.1038/s41467-023-37445-5Licence: CC BY

Light-driven peristaltic pumpingFinal published version, 1.64 MBLicence: CC BY

https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202305035024Licence: CC BY

Data set for "Light-driven peristaltic pumping by an actuating splay-bend strip"
Dradrach, K. (Contributor), Zmyślony, M. (Contributor), Deng, Z. (Creator), Priimagi, A. (Contributor), Biggins, J. (Contributor) & Wasylczyk, P. (Contributor), Zenodo, 4 Apr 2023
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.7702020
Dataset

Red Labs for soft photonic, robotic and energy materials
Priimägi, A. (Contact), Vivo, P. (Contact) & Nonappa, N. (Contact)
Materials Science and Environmental Engineering
Facility/equipment: Research infrastructure

Cite this

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title = "Light-driven peristaltic pumping by an actuating splay-bend strip",

abstract = "Despite spectacular progress in microfluidics, small-scale liquid manipulation, with few exceptions, is still driven by external pumps and controlled by large-scale valves, increasing cost and size and limiting complexity. By contrast, optofluidics uses light to power, control and monitor liquid manipulation, potentially allowing for small, self-contained microfluidic devices. Here we demonstrate a soft light-propelled actuator made of liquid crystal gel that pumps microlitre volumes of water. The strip of actuating material serves as both a pump and a channel leading to an extremely simple microfluidic architecture that is both powered and controlled by light. The performance of the pump is well explained by a simple theoretical model in which the light-induced bending of the actuator competes with the liquid{\textquoteright}s surface tension. The theory highlights that effective pumping requires a threshold light intensity and strip width. The proposed system explores the benefits of shifting the complexity of microfluidic systems from the fabricated device to spatio-temporal control over stimulating light patterns.",

author = "Klaudia Dradrach and Micha{\l} Zmy{\'s}lony and Zixuan Deng and Arri Priimagi and John Biggins and Piotr Wasylczyk",

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AU - Zmyślony, Michał

AU - Deng, Zixuan

AU - Priimagi, Arri

AU - Biggins, John

AU - Wasylczyk, Piotr

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N2 - Despite spectacular progress in microfluidics, small-scale liquid manipulation, with few exceptions, is still driven by external pumps and controlled by large-scale valves, increasing cost and size and limiting complexity. By contrast, optofluidics uses light to power, control and monitor liquid manipulation, potentially allowing for small, self-contained microfluidic devices. Here we demonstrate a soft light-propelled actuator made of liquid crystal gel that pumps microlitre volumes of water. The strip of actuating material serves as both a pump and a channel leading to an extremely simple microfluidic architecture that is both powered and controlled by light. The performance of the pump is well explained by a simple theoretical model in which the light-induced bending of the actuator competes with the liquid’s surface tension. The theory highlights that effective pumping requires a threshold light intensity and strip width. The proposed system explores the benefits of shifting the complexity of microfluidic systems from the fabricated device to spatio-temporal control over stimulating light patterns.

AB - Despite spectacular progress in microfluidics, small-scale liquid manipulation, with few exceptions, is still driven by external pumps and controlled by large-scale valves, increasing cost and size and limiting complexity. By contrast, optofluidics uses light to power, control and monitor liquid manipulation, potentially allowing for small, self-contained microfluidic devices. Here we demonstrate a soft light-propelled actuator made of liquid crystal gel that pumps microlitre volumes of water. The strip of actuating material serves as both a pump and a channel leading to an extremely simple microfluidic architecture that is both powered and controlled by light. The performance of the pump is well explained by a simple theoretical model in which the light-induced bending of the actuator competes with the liquid’s surface tension. The theory highlights that effective pumping requires a threshold light intensity and strip width. The proposed system explores the benefits of shifting the complexity of microfluidic systems from the fabricated device to spatio-temporal control over stimulating light patterns.

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Light-driven peristaltic pumping by an actuating splay-bend strip

Abstract

Funding

Publication forum classification

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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Datasets

Data set for "Light-driven peristaltic pumping by an actuating splay-bend strip"

Equipment

Red Labs for soft photonic, robotic and energy materials

Cite this