Worth a read

Because our membranes are not mono-disperse, we often debate the relative contribution of large pores vs small pores in both diffusive and convective separations. Indeed it is possible that the way pores contribute to transport in these two modes is different and would give rise to different fractionations of the same sample with the same…

Here is an interesting discovery of nanopores in the SiO2 layer after the laser annealing. Basically I was doing laser annealing on free-standing OS membrane the other day. It’s an excimer laser  with 248nm wavelength, 25ns FWHM and spot size of 2.6 mm diameter. Same setup we used before in ORNL. The sample we test…

Hi all, We have already showed in our earlier [ post ] that our shear-free chemotaxis system can indeed elicit chemotaxis, suggesting that we have successfully translated a gradient through the membrane to the shear-free side of the system where the cells reside.  However, it is still nice to show via fluorescence how the translated gradient looks…

In this post we look at the effect of altering the area available for filtration on a standard 5 slot SepCon.  Karl and I did this by simply cutting gaskets such that they covered different regions of the surface of a chip.  We have three configurations, 1, 3 and 5 slots.  Here’s a picture of…

Thanks to UR cleanroom and Jim Mitchell, we finally have a better way to deposit the ZnO film that our fabrication process uses as sacrificial layer. Below is a quick comparison of the previous ZnO deposited by sol-gel and the new ZnO deposited by sputtering at UR. Hopefully, if you look close enough (or far…

We’ve made a few academic inquiries so far into the theory which governs our nanoporous membrane transfer, but engineers as we are, the pace of our practical knowledge has outstripped that of our theoretical understanding. Here, I want to share a summary of what we know about these transferred membranes from a practical perspective, oriented…