Updated Burst Pressures Picture

Purpose: Study the hemocompatibility of different substrates using platelet activation as the indicator.   Extraction of platelet rich plasma (PRP): PRP were prepared from whole blood following the standard protocol outlined by Abcam (http://www.abcam.com/protocols/isolation-of-human-platelets-from-whole-blood). To describe briefly, 9 mL whole blood was centrifuged at 200g for 20 minutes in a 15 mL Falcon tube to obtain…

I went through and characterized each wafer by thickness and RTP. I graphed “Average Pore Size vs. Porosity” and “Average Pore Size vs. Cut-Off Pore Size” for each processing condition that had at least four representative wafers. ** Yesterday, Professor McGrath and I had a quick chat about the data. I have inserted a few…

Tweaking simulation was not bringing it any closer to the experimental shown in the last post.  This led me to try the experimental once more.  I set up the same system and used 1:2 dilution of the standard protein mixture.  I then homogenized the retentate and filtrate and ran 10 ul of each on a…

Last week, I looked at discoloration with different wafer numbers (639,670,672,683,685,702,703), pre- and post-rebuild.  This experiment was done in the oven at 37C, in PBS and without RTP.   Based on the starting color, w670 and w672 are the thinnest membranes.  These discolored rather quickly (1 day).  The only other membrane that discolored over 3…

Production this week yielded mixed results. We ran eight wafers through four different RTP temperatures with/without the susceptor. We wanted to test our theory that temperature non-uniformity inside the chamber was causing the morphology change across the wafer. This proved to not be the case! Wafers that were treated with and without susceptor showed the…