Charge-powered electrotaxis for versatile droplet manipulation

Abstract

Taxis is an instinctive behavior of living organisms to external dangers or benefits. Here, we report a taxis-like behavior associated with liquid droplets on charged substrates in response to the external stimuli, referred to as droplet electrotaxis. Such droplet electrotaxis enables us to use either solid or liquid (such as water) matter, even a human finger, as stimuli to spatiotemporal precisely manipulate the liquid droplets of various physicochemical properties, including water, ethanol with low surface tension, viscous oil, and so on. Droplet electrotaxis also features a flexible configuration that even can manifest in the presence of an additional layer, such as the ceramic with a thickness of ∼10 mm. More importantly, superior to existing electricity-based strategies, droplet electrotaxis can harness the charges generated from diverse manners, including pyroelectricity, triboelectricity, piezoelectricity, and so on. These properties dramatically increase the application scenarios of droplet electrotaxis, such as cell labeling and droplet information recording.