Issue 38, 2017

Bio-inspired liquid transport via elastocapillary interaction of a thin membrane with a liquid meniscus

Abstract

We report bio-inspired (from a hummingbird's tongue) liquid transport via elastocapillary interaction of a thin membrane with a liquid meniscus. A soft wedge–thin rectangular membrane forming a wedge with a rigid substrate and a flat thin rectangular membrane undergo large deformation while interacting with liquid menisci. The membrane deformation leads to the formation of confinement which in turn results in elastocapillary flow along the membrane length. A simple theoretical model based on the Euler Bernoulli law is used to predict the membrane deformation profiles, which compare well with that obtained from experiments. In the wedge case, the membrane surface and liquid are selected such that the Concus–Finn criterion is not satisfied to contrast the present case of elastocapillary flow from the typical corner flow reported in the literature. The meniscus location versus time studies indicated that the flow exhibits the typical Washburn regime with Image ID:c7sm00940b-t1.gif, except for a sudden increase in velocity at the end of the membrane length. The effects of membrane thickness and width, liquids and substrates were studied to determine the expression for the modified Washburn constant Wm in both the wedge and flat membranes. It was found that gravity plays a role for Bo > 0.94 and for Bo = 1.9, the effect of inclination angle on the flow was studied. The elastocapillary flow with thin membranes could open up an opportunity for a new area, namely “membrane microfluidics” or “lab on a membrane”, for diagnostics and other applications.

Graphical abstract: Bio-inspired liquid transport via elastocapillary interaction of a thin membrane with a liquid meniscus

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
10 May 2017
Accepted
09 Aug 2017
First published
10 Aug 2017

Soft Matter, 2017,13, 6858-6869

Bio-inspired liquid transport via elastocapillary interaction of a thin membrane with a liquid meniscus

R. A. Samy, D. George and A. K. Sen, Soft Matter, 2017, 13, 6858 DOI: 10.1039/C7SM00940B

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements