Fabrication and characterization of an electrowetting display based on the wetting–dewetting in a cubic structure

In this article, a new and low-cost method for the fabrication of an electrowetting display is presented. A thin layer of PMMA was used as a dielectric on an electrode. Some 2 mm cubic holes, each representing one pixel of a display, were laser machined on a PMMA sheet and placed on top of the dielectric layer. The whole structure was then coated with fluoropolymer. The cubes were dosed with colored oil and the structure was placed in a saline environment. After applying electric potential between the electrode and the saline, water wetted the bottom face of the cubes and pushed the colored oil off the center, turning the transparency of a pixel from a minimum to a maximum. Computer simulations, the fabrication process, the dosing mechanism and the behavior of pixels in different electric potentials and their potential for displaying have also been investigated.