Copper-Electroplating-Modified Liquid Metal Microfluidic Electrodes
Jiahao Gong,
Bingxin Liu,
Pan Zhang,
Huimin Zhang,
Lin Gui
Affiliations
Jiahao Gong
Liquid Metal and Cryogenic Biomedical Research Center, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China
Bingxin Liu
Liquid Metal and Cryogenic Biomedical Research Center, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China
Pan Zhang
Liquid Metal and Cryogenic Biomedical Research Center, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China
Huimin Zhang
Liquid Metal and Cryogenic Biomedical Research Center, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China
Lin Gui
Liquid Metal and Cryogenic Biomedical Research Center, Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 29 Zhongguancun East Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100190, China
Here, we report a novel technology for the fabrication of copper-electroplating-modified liquid metal microelectrodes. This technology overcomes the complexity of the traditional fabrication of sidewall solid metal electrodes and successfully fabricates a pair of tiny stable solid-contact microelectrodes on both sidewalls of a microchannel. Meanwhile, this technology also addresses the instability of liquid metal electrodes when directly contacted with sample solutions. The fabrication of this microelectrode depends on controllable microelectroplating of copper onto the gallium electrode by designing a microelectrolyte cell in a microfluidic chip. Using this technology, we successfully fabricate various microelectrodes with different microspacings (from 10 μm to 40 μm), which were effectively used for capacitive sensing, including droplet detection and oil particle counting.