Since the control experiments seem to be going OK I decided to try again with one of the NPN-tented structures that Greg made originally. Since piranha cleaning seemed to be making a difference I wanted to pre-clean the chip, but from previous experience with a couple of poorly-tented NPN chips as guinea pigs, the NPN…

Phase II submission August 1, 2016 or January 30, 2017 UR Tasks – Biocompatibility by Feb. 1 2016 Channel design optimization by November 2015

The idea here is to use nano membranes that have been integrated in a chip with the intention to mix otherwise laminar flow streams.   It was suggested at one of the meetings that I should superimpose the streams, then have one of them come through the membrane into the other stream.  The idea is…

The following post is the abstract that I recently submitted for the BMES Annual Conference. Introduction: Permeable membranes provide a physiologically relevant cell culture substrate for in vitro study of barrier cell types, such as endothelial cells, which assume a polarized morphology with distinct apical and basolateral surfaces. Cell morphology and subsequent monolayer formation and…

To continue our spreading and proliferation experiments on various topographical features and stiffness, I repeated the HUVEC experiments I had done before due to a possible artificial bias that we think is a result of high seeding.  To enusre accuracy, I repeated the experiment and added another plate to test the HUVECs on substrates of…

In order to investigate the breakage of nanoporous nitride hemodialysis chips during rat dialysis, we are investigating the pressures in the system. We will investigate normal operating pressures as well as potential impulse pressures from handling or valve operation. To get a base line, four LabSmith pressure sensors were aded to a setup which mimics…

Conventional tissue culture substrates do not accurately emulate in vivo surface conditions. This project involves the development and characterization of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate for cell culture. PDMS is an important biomaterial due to its optical transparency, biocompatibility, and variable elastic modulus. ADSCs and HUVECs were used to analyze spreading and proliferation on PDMS-based substrates of…

Just wanted to show the detail of PETL channels.  A couple of interesting things:  The adhesive layer(s) are pretty thick, and look pretty smooth after heat curation.  Also, the channels are slightly beveled, probably due to craft cutter blade.

Utilizing a cation-exchange membrane like Nafion makes it possible to electrically induce the concentration difference across the membrane. The resulting osmosis of water augments the overall flowrate in addition to the electroosmosis. The thinner the membrane, the stronger the osmotic flow is induced electrically. This behavior can be predicted from the conventional transport model for…

Summary The CEIS project ended in June, and I am summarizing the last few weeks of activities below by Josh and me.  We did a little more work on reducing the SU-8 film stress through the processing conditions.  We also succeeded in obtaining smooth poly-Si films in the RIT SMFL.  We made a few test…