Polymer Micro/Nanotechnologies for Biofluidic Manipulation

There has been intense interest and rapid progress in fabricating micro and nanoscale structures that use polymers as structural and/or functional materials. Polymers are available at low cost, and can be synthesized and processed with a variety of techniques that are flexible and inexpensive. As such, polymer micro/nanotechnologies greatly complement silicon- and glass-based micromachining techniques to enable micro/nanodevices with a diverse spectrum of functionalities. Polymers (e.g., PDMS, SU-8 and Parylene) are used extensively as microdevice structural materials at our laboratory. More importantly, polymers are also been purposely employed as functional materials by exploiting some of their unique properties. For example, the hydrophobicity and compliance of the polymer PDMS have been explored for passive microfluidic control, and nanoengineered, stimuli-responsive polymer surfaces are being pursued for intelligent micro/nanofluidic manipulation.

Projects

- Microfluidic devices with PDMS as a functional material
- Nanoengineered responsive polymers for micro/nanofluidic manipulation