Aqueous microdrop manipulation and mixing using ferrofluid dynamics

In this letter, the authors present a simple method to manipulate free microdroplets using ferrofluid dynamics. For droplet transport, a set of periodic lines of ferrofluid on top of a silicon wafer is created by a single strip magnet and dynamically changed by the rotation of a magnetic stirrer underneath it. It is demonstrated that the speed of droplet movement depends on the rotation speed of the magnetic stirrer as well as the size of the droplet. For better droplet mixing efficiency, a discontinuous pattern at the mixing spots is created by adding a smaller strip magnet to the above setup.