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Jaime's Project Page - RISE Summer 2008 |
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Intern: Jaime Torres, Chemistry, California State University, Los Angeles
Mentor: Luis Campos
Faculty Supervisor: Craig Hawker
Department: Materials |
HIGHLY VERSATILE AND ROBUST MATERIALS FOR APPLICATIONS IN MICROFLUIDICS
Microfluidics describes a broad range of technologies that manipulate nanoliter and microliter volumes via
micrometer sized channels within fabricated devices. The ability to miniaturize fluid handling has several
advantages, including low sample volumes, fast response times, and portable on-site detection. However despite the
advantages of microfluidic devices for lab-on-a chip applications, the use of poly(dimethyl siloxane) (PDMS) as the
polymer of choice for the fabrication of such devices severely limits their ability to perform robust analysis. PDMS
is incompatible with several organic based solvents and is notoriously gas permeable, which induces intense
swelling that leads to device failure. Thus, we are currently developing new alternative systems based on poly([3-
mercaptopropyl]methyl siloxane) (PMMS) to yield highly cross-linked matrices via thiol-ene click chemistry using a
wide variety of multifunctional alkene compounds. Advantages of these systems include fast fabrication times and
the ability to withstand organic solvents with minimal swelling. Uptake studies reveal that PMMS based materials
swell less than PDMS in non-polar solvents by a factor of 5 by weight. Moreover, PMMS performs extremely well
in organic solvents, such as ethyl acetate, which swells the PMMS materials ca. 20 times less than PDMS.
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