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Design and analysis of a microfluidic colour-changing glasses controlled by shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators

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Abstract

In this work, a microfluidic colour-changing glasses controlled by shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators is designed and presented by circulating colour liquids in the microfluidic channels on the lens. For liquids controlling, a unidirectional NiTi SMA spring is employed to design and fabricate a simple microfluidic actuator, which can provide the maximum restoring force of 5.27 N and the fastest recovering rate of 2.71 mm/s. After the responding characteristics of the SMA controller are tested and calculated under different conditions, the pressure changes at the channel inlet are investigated in liquids circulation process for different channel designs. This liquid colour-changing glasses show fast response, rapid prototyping and high controllability compared with the traditional solid colour-changing way. Meantime, the impacts of different channel designs on response performances are validated, which can provide foundations for further optimization of the channel designs. Soft lithography technology is applied for the fabrication of the colour-changing layer made of transparent silicone PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) instead of conventional mechanical machining. Organosilicon coating based on methyltrimethoxysilane and phenyltrimethoxysilane (PTMS) is firstly fabricated for modification of PDMS surface to increase the wear resistance of the colour-changing lens.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to give their acknowledgement to the National Natural Science Foundation of China for the support (No. 51175101) on this paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fluid Control and Automation, Harbin Institute of Technology, Box 3040, Science Park, No. 2, Yikuang Street Nangang District, Harbin, 150001, China

    Min Zhang & Songjing Li

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  1. Min Zhang
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  2. Songjing Li
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Contributions

SL conceived and designed the research. MZ and SL wrote the main manuscript text. MZ did all the experiments and prepared all the figures. All the authors contributed to the discussion of the results and reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Songjing Li.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests.

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Zhang, M., Li, S. Design and analysis of a microfluidic colour-changing glasses controlled by shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators. Microsyst Technol 24, 1097–1107 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-017-3465-y

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