EO at 1 mM vs 100 mM salts & the role of a meniscus in pressure measurements

Summary This post complements Fabricating 0.5 um Channels in Microscope Slides for Staph Invasion Assays. Challenges in the etch transfer process necessitated switching to a different substrate that had stronger selectivity. With that in mind, we set out to create 500×500 nm channels in silicon wafers for the bone invasion study. We had partial success (micron-sized…

I made a size ladder of ALD-ed chips. The chips I began with were ~35 nm average pore size, and I applied 2, 5, 7, 10, and 12 nm of alumina using the ALD in UR nano. This does represent an incomplete data set – the 7 nm and 12 nm alumina chips I first…

As a proof-of-principle, Henry and I have been working on a microfluidic device for flowing blood cells/particles across cultured cells on pnc-Si.  More on why this is important later.  We’ve come up with a prototype and I’ve been testing it out.  I will include schematics later but here are the first couple of movies I’ve…

The goal of the blood brain barrier device is to co-culture cells in a closed system, with the apical chamber under flow conditions, while still being able to access either chamber for media changes or to introduce new solutions.  Electrodes to measure TEER will need to be included in future design iterations. There are two…

This week, I did a systematic study on the growth rate of carbon on bare and aluminum oxide coated pnc-Si membranes. The bare samples were not treated prior to carbonization, while the alumina coated samples underwent a 5 nm treatment in the ALD tool. A bare and alumina coated sample were placed together inside the…

A simple hydraulic permeability study was performed to determine whether carbonization would negatively impact water transport through the membranes. 5 slit square SepCons from SC 471 were carbonized and put in the ultra-centrifuge with a 500 uL starting volume.  The samples were spun for 10 minutes at 3000 RPM (equiv to 4.95 PSI starting). SC…