A comparative study of electrolysis and boiling for bubble-driven microactuations

Thermal generation (i.e., boiling) has been the most common bubble-generation method for bubble-driven microactuation, followed by the recent interests in electrochemical generation (i.e., electrolysis). This paper studies energy consumption of the two approaches through systematic experiments and simple thermal models. The objective is to start building a design guideline for the bubble-driven microactuators in microfluidic systems. The results indicate the power consumption of electrolysis microactuation is several orders of magnitude lower than that of boiling. Analysis of controllability, biocompatibility and scaling effect also shows the advantages of electrolysis. However, removal of bubbles is more problematic for electrolysis than that for thermal bubbles.