The paper describes results from an experimental study of the effect of an electric field on nucleate boiling and the critical heat flux (CHF) in pool boiling at atmospheric pressure with polished smooth boiling surface. A micro scaled electrode with slits for bubbles to come out was designed in order to create non uniform high electric field strength and to produce electrohydrodynamics (EHD) convection with the application of dc voltage. The application of high electric field strongly enhanced the heat flux and the heat transfer coefficient. From observations of the behavior of bubbles over the electrode and the boiling surface condition, the instability between the liquid and the vapor increased the heat flux, the heat transfer coefficient and the CHF.

Electrohydrodynamic (EHD) micropumps with three-dimensional 50μm × 50μm micropillar electrodes were fabricated and tested in this study. Two basic electrode configurations were investigated: (i) micropillar emitter and collector electrodes (symmetric) and (ii) micropillar emitter and planar collector electrodes (asymmetric). The micropumps were fabricated using chromium/gold planar electrodes with 3-D Nickel micro-pillars on a glass substrate that was integrated within a 100 μm high PDMS microchannel. The effect of the spanwise micropillar spacing spacing on the pump performance was determined. The pumps were tested using HFE-7100 as the working fluid for the maximum pressure generation under a no flow condition. The micropumps with the asymmetric electrode design generated a significantly higher pressure head and flow rate than the corresponding micropumps with symmetric electrode configuration for the same applied voltage, with lower power consumption. A decrease in the spanwise spacing of the micropillar electrodes increased the pump performance for the symmetric configuration, while the performance decreased for the asymmetric configuration.

In this work, we found experimentally that there exist fairly strong fluid flows in AC electrowetting, which can be utilized as a means to mix the fluids in EWOD-based micro-devices. We visualized the internal flow. There may exist two distinct flow-generation mechanisms; one is the droplet oscillation, and the other is the electrohydrodynamic flow. The flow pattern is significantly dependent on the applied AC frequency. At low frequencies (represented here by 1 kHz), the center of the vortices is located somewhat randomly and the flow directs upward near the symmetric axis. At high frequencies (represented by 128 kHz), however, a pair of vortices having quite a regular structure is clearly visible and the flow directs downward near the symmetric axis. The flow patterns are strongly dependent on the position of the point electrode. The droplet surface undergoes a periodic oscillation (visualized by a high-speed camera) with a frequency exactly twice the frequency of applied electrical signal. The oscillating interface can generate a steady streaming. However the numerical results show that there exists no electric field at low AC frequencies. On the contrary, there exists quite a strong electric field inside the droplet at high frequencies. It means the electrohydrodynamic flow cannot be generated at the low frequency region, and the droplet oscillation might cause the flow generation at low frequencies. We also demonstrated the flow can be beneficially utilized as a mixing method.