Microfluidics

Research that includes: 

  • Microvalves and fluidic flow control
  • Micropumps
  • Modeling of microfluidics
  • Particulate air monitoring
  • Flow Sensors
  • Capillary Pump Loop
  • Optoelectronic Transport & Tweezers

BPN617: Optofluidic Controls and Multi-Photon Real-Time Imaging of Cell Reprogramming

Chi-cheng Fu
Erh-Chia Yeh
2011

Cell reprogramming (for example, conversion of skin cells into stem cells) holds great promise for regenerative medicine such as replacement-cell therapy and patient-specific drug screening. However, the efficiency of reprogramming is hampered by poor understanding on the mechanisms. Here we propose to develop optofluidic controls of cellular communications and molecular imaging of the reprogramming dynamics in a large scale integrated platform. First, two millions of single stem cells and fibroblasts can be paired by microfluidic devices. Then, the joined cell membranes can be...

BPN486: Enhancing Shear-Mediated Arteriogenesis in Cerebral Vessels

Tyson N. Kim
2010

Occlusive arterial disease, including stroke and heart attack, is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity in Americans. There is significant interest in developing molecular therapy to stimulate blood vessel growth and return blood flow to dying tissue. Our research may elucidate an important biological mechanism that controls artery growth, helping in the development of molecular treatments for occlusive arterial disease.

Project end date: 08/18/11

BPN334: Light-actuated Electrokinetics for Biomolecular Analysis

Arash Jamshidi
2011

This project explores the use of novel optofluidic technologies such as optoelectronic tweezers (OET) and optoelectrowetting (OEW) for manipulation and analysis of biomolecules. Optoelectronic tweezers is an optical manipulation method for manipulating cells, bioparticles and other types of particles. In addition to being non-invasive, dynamic, and reconfigurable, OET provides several advantages over conventional optical manipulation methods including lower optical intensity and larger working area. Light-actuated digital microfluidics or optoelectrowetting is a method for dynamic,...

BPN333: Study of Single Cell Heterogeneity and Progeny with Phototransistor-based Optoelectronic Tweezers

Hsan-yin (Tony) Hsu
2011

Light-induced dielectrophorsis, or optoelectronic tweezers (OET), provides a dynamic, non-contact, non-invasive optical cell manipulation technique with single cell resolution. OET features a low optical intensity requirement, allowing a large manipulation area for high throughput and preventing potential optical damages. We have designed and fabricated the phototransistor-based OET(Ph-OET) device that enables manipulation of cells in cell culture media. Recently development includes a integrated system for long-term live-cell imaging of mammalian cells with continuous optical...

BPN591: A Unified Platform for Optoelectrowetting and Optoelectronic Tweezers

Justin Valley
2011

A platform capable of seamlessly unifying both optoelectrowetting and optoelectronic tweezers is presented. This enables the user to manipulate aqueous droplets (with electrowetting) as well as individual particles within those droplets (with dielectrophoresis). The device requires no photolithography and droplet/particle manipulation can occur continuously over the entire surface of the device.

Project end date: 08/19/11

BPN615: Integrated Microfluidic CMOS (imCMOS) for Quantitative Cell Biology

Ebrahim Ghafar-Zadeh
2011

We present an integrated microfluidic CMOS (imCMOS) system for high-accuracy cell adhesion analysis. The hybrid imCMOS system combining novel microelectronic and microfluidic technologies features a large array of capacitive sensors implemented in 90 nm CMOS process and incorporated with microfluidic processor for cell culture devices. This imCMOS method offers the advantages of real-time, quantitative, high precision and high throughput focal cell adhesion analysis suitable for a verity of applications including neural interface studies. We demonstrate the preliminary results of...

BPN529: Sepsis Diagnostics Using iMDs

Debkishore Mitra
Tiffany Chen
2011

Sepsis is a condition in which the human body is fighting a severe microbial infection that has spread through the blood stream. Blood sepsis is the leading cause of death of immunocompromised patients, and is responsible for over 200,000 deaths per year in the United States. Present diagnostic techniques take a long time to give a confirmation, are prone to contamination and also are unreliable at low bacterial load. Hence the effectiveness of therapies can be improved if early diagnosis of sepsis is done. This would reduce the microbial load that has to combated, and would hence...

BPN619: Digital Microfluidics Based Label-free Technique for Selective and Sensitive Detection and Identification of Biological Molecules; Plasmonic Droplet

Young Geun Park
2011

Direct detection and identification of low concentrated biological molecules selectively and sensitively without any labeling is necessary to obtain molecular finger printing information in short time, decrease significantly the mortality rate and reduce the cost of treating the sample. However, there is no existing technology to detect a variety size and shape of biological molecule from the biomedical sample in short time effectively. Here, we have developed a sensing platform of digital microfluidics to achieve label free detection of biological molecule. We reports that self-...

BPN589: Microfluidic High-Throughput Single-Cell Analysis

Qiong Pan
SoonGweon Hong
2011

A cell in vivo lives in a community, and understands its fate by interacting with other cells. It learns its position, characteristics and roles by cellular signals such as extracellular matrix, cytokine, hormone and other secretions. Even though cell-to-cell interaction is considered most critical in cellular events, its complexity has been the main obstacle for us to study details. In this respect, we need to simplify the study of cellular interaction by limiting the number of associating cells. Also a long-time observation is required to provide affluent information, because...

BPN637: Novel Molecular Diagnostics Based on RNAi for HIV Detection

Erh-Chia Yeh
2011

Currently the mainstream technique for HIV diagnosis in resource poor settings is rapid diagnostic tests (eg. lateral flow assays). However, most of these tests do not provide a quantitative readout, shelf life is limited, has a large window of detection, and cannot monitor the patient's disease progression. Here we propose a novel technique for rapid on site diagnostics of HIV in a resource poor setting based on sensing the RNA interference levels. When CD4+T cells are infected by HIV, their RNA interference pathway is induced and RISC complexes become a sequence specific enzyme...