{"id":238380,"date":"2025-11-24T12:37:49","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:37:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=238380"},"modified":"2025-11-24T12:37:49","modified_gmt":"2025-11-24T17:37:49","slug":"magnetically-reconfigurable-ribbons-let-scientists-program-liquids-on-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/11\/magnetically-reconfigurable-ribbons-let-scientists-program-liquids-on-demand\/","title":{"rendered":"Magnetically Reconfigurable Ribbons Let Scientists ‘Program’ Liquids on Demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Materials Science and Engineering Department professor and UConn IMS resident faculty member, Xueju \u201cSophie\u201d Wang\u2019s<\/a> group has unveiled a simple but powerful way to control liquids: magnetically reconfigurable, multistable ribbons that switch shape on command and then hold that shape without any power. The study, Magnetically Reconfigurable Multistable Ribbon Arrays for Liquid Manipulation<\/em><\/a>, appears in the journal Device. The work is in collaboration with Halim Kusumaatmaja\u2019s group at University of Edinburgh, UK<\/a> and Teng Zhang\u2019s group at Syracuse University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Zizheng Wang, a Ph.D. student under Wang\u2019s advisement, is first author for the publication and was the first-place winner of the 2022 Graduate Elevator Pitch Competition. Gabriel Alkuino, a Ph.D. student in Zhang\u2019s group at Syracuse, and Samuel J. Avis, a former Ph.D. student in Kusumaatmaja\u2019s group at Edinburgh, conducted theoretical and numerical analysis of the devices and provided rational guidelines of experimental designs.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the work are thin ribbons made from magnetic polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)\u2014a soft silicone embedded with magnetic particles\u2014shaped by compressive buckling into three distinct, stable forms. With brief magnetic actuation, each ribbon can transition among these three buckled states and then retain its state without a continuous external field, providing a kind of \u201cmechanical memory\u201d in soft matter.<\/p>\n

\"A
Ph.D. student Zizheng Wang places a dyed water droplet onto a ribbon array and slowly rotates the substrate to observe when the droplet begins to move (UConn Photo).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The researchers first demonstrated a switchable fluid junction inside a two\u2011dimensional microfluidic channel. By toggling a ribbon\u2019s state, the device could redirect liquid to different outlet paths on demand, acting like a valve that is both reconfigurable and energy\u2011frugal. Because the structure remains in its chosen shape after the field is removed, the flow configuration persists without ongoing input\u2014an advantage for portable or battery\u2011powered systems.<\/p>\n

Building on that concept, the team designed dynamic surface textures by arranging ribbons into addressable arrays. Changing the state of individual ribbons altered the surface\u2019s critical angles\u2014the threshold conditions that determine whether a droplet pins in place or is released. In a 2\u00d73 ribbon array testbed, the authors showed that selectively tuning each ribbon\u2019s state enables complex droplet manipulations, such as holding, releasing, and routing droplets along programmed paths. This fine\u2011grained control hints at \u201cpixel\u2011level\u201d liquid handling for future lab\u2011on\u2011a\u2011chip platforms.<\/p>\n

To underpin the experiments, the group performed meso\u2011scale simulations using coupled electrocapillary models, providing a theoretical framework to guide more sophisticated device layouts and operating modes. These models help map how surface topology and interfacial forces interact (key to designing larger arrays and predicting droplet behavior under different configurations).<\/p>\n

Soft, reconfigurable elements that store their state without power could simplify the control architecture of microfluidic systems. Instead of relying on complex networks of pumps, valves, and continuous fields, arrays of multistable ribbons can encode routing instructions directly in their shapes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wang lab\u2019s collaborative research of multistable soft structures steer flows and choreograph droplets in work published in Device<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":217770,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866,2460,2459,2076,1875],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-238380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","category-faculty","category-graduate-students","category-research","category-grad-school"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 07:54:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238380"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":238382,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238380\/revisions\/238382"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/217770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238380"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=238380"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=238380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}