Our group has come up with a solution for laptop chassis cooling, using droplet-based digital microfluidic principles. The droplets can be driven by electric field or by wetting gradient by making the contact surface selectively hydrophilic or hydrophobic. This involves effective modification of contact angle using electric potential exploiting the principles of electrowetting or by direct modification of substrate by chemical treatment. The difference in contact angle impels the droplet. The droplet is programmed towards a hot spot and effectively takes away the heat through evaporation.

References

• R. Dey, S. DasGupta, S. Chakraborty, “Electrowetting of sessile drops on soft dielectric elastomer films”, Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, vol. 21, pp. 48(1-12), 2017
• R. Dey. A. Daga, S. DasGupta, S. Chakraborty, “Electrically modulated dynamic spreading of drops on soft surfaces”, Applied Physics Letters, vol. 107, pp. 034101 (1-5), 2015
• K. Chaudhury and S. Chakraborty, “Spreading of a droplet over a non-isothermal substrate: Multiple Scaling Regimes”, Langmuir, vol. 31, pp. 4169-4175, 2015
• D. Chakraborty, G. S. Sudha, S. Chakraborty, S. Dasgupta, “Effect of submicron particles on Electrowetting on Dielectrics (EWOD) of sessile droplets”, Journal of Colloid and Interface Science, vol. 363, pp. 640-645, 2011