Electrically switchable capillarity of ionic liquids

Xiaodong Hu, Shiguo Zhang, Chao Qu, Qinghua Zhang, Liujin Lu, Xiangyuan Ma, Xiaoping Zhang, Youquan Deng

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

Electrocapillarity is the basis of modern electrowetting. And room temperature ionic liquids, an increasingly important set of electrolytes and organic salts that are liquid at room temperature, are considered a novel class of electrowetting agents, because of non-significant vapor pressure, nonflammability, good thermal stability, and a wide useable temperature range. In this paper, a simple device has been fabricated to investigate the electrocapillarity of ionic liquids. It shows attractive features involving wide operating temperature and in particular high stability, fast response and good reversibility at high temperatures. Besides, electrocapillarity of ionic liquids is strongly dependent on power supply frequency. In particular, high frequency, stable, reversible and wide height of rise modulations were obtained. The phenomenon of ionic liquids-based electrocapillarity was found to be affected by the structure and physicochemical properties of ionic liquids such as density, surface tension, alkyl carbon chain length of cation, type of the anion, etc., and the efficiency could be further improved through optimal choice of ambient phase or rational design and synthesis of ionic liquids.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2069-2078
Number of pages10
JournalJournal of Adhesion Science and Technology
Volume26
Issue number12-17
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Sep 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • AC electric fields
  • Electrocapillarity
  • height of rise
  • high temperature
  • ionic liquids
  • response time

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