Journal
CHEMISTRY-AN ASIAN JOURNAL
Volume 8, Issue 12, Pages 3200-3206Publisher
WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH
DOI: 10.1002/asia.201300941
Keywords
hydrophobic effect; microdroplets; noncovalent interactions; pH-responsive adhesion; surface chemistry
Categories
Funding
- National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [21304025]
- Open Project of State Key Laboratory of Urban Water Resource and Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology [ES201008]
- Natural Scientific Research Innovation Foundation in Harbin Institute of Technology [2009087]
- Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education of China [20112302120062]
- China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [2011M500650]
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We report a new strategy to realize the selective transportation of microdroplets assisted by a superhydrophobic surface with pH-responsive adhesion. On the surface, only basic microdroplets can be pinned and acidic or neutral microdroplets can easily roll off. Therefore, by using the surface as a mechanical hand, microdroplets can be transported selectively according to one's requirements by simply controlling the pH of the solution. The special ability of the surface to achieve selective transportation is ascribed to the following two reasons: 1)superhydrophobicity, which can avoid the wetting problem, and 2)pH-responsive adhesion, which results from the combined effect of chemical variation of the carboxylic acid group and microstructures on the surface. Furthermore, we also demonstrated a process of selective transportation of microdroplets for applications in droplet-based microreactors through our surface. The results reported herein advance a new method to realize the selective transportation of microdroplets and we believe that this method could potentially be used in a wide range of applications, such as biomolecular detection and transportation in biochips.
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