Electrostatic stabilization of fluid microstructures

A liquid surface of arbitrary shape is, in general, dynamically unstable due to gradients in Laplace pressure. This greatly limits the class of morphologies eligible for artificial fluid microstructures. In this work, we demonstrate that a wide class of these otherwise unstable surface morphologies can be stabilized using electrostatic fields. Complex stable fluid microstructures were generated in a conventional electrowetting setup operated at high voltage. We present an electrostatic model that explains the stability and the scale of the stable structures as a function of external control parameters. The stability as well as the universality of these structures naturally leads to novel concepts in microfluidic technology. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.