Low-cost spin-coatable, transferable, and high-κ ion gel dielectric for flexible electrowetting

摘要

A novel ion gel material was demonstrated as a high- capacitance dielectric for flexible electrowetting-on- dielectric (EWOD) applications. Unlike conventional dielectric materials such as SiO2 and Al2O3 commonly used for EWOD, an ion gel offers two or three order higher capacitance than them, while being fabricated through a simple low-cost spin-coating process without complex and expensive fabrication setups such as high vaccume facilities. In this paper, a brief introduction into the constituents of the ion gel and its electrical modeling for EWOD are discussed, followed by fabrication methodologies. With the ion gel films consisting of a [P(VDF-HFP)] copolymer and a [EMIM][TFSI] ionic liquid, we compared EWOD performance of the ion gel samples with other conventional dielectric materials and showed the potential of the ion gel material capable of low-cost, spin-coatable, transferable and high-capacitanec dielectric for flexible EWOD applications.