Effects of chain stiffness and salt concentration on responses of polyelectrolyte brushes under external electric field

Qianqian Cao, Chuncheng Zuo, Lujuan Li, and Guang Yan

The authors address the effects of salt concentration and chain stiffness on conformational transition and dynamic response of polyelectrolyte brushes under added electric fields. Their results are helpful for the design of soft smart valves in biomimetic nanofluidic channels.

Biomicrofluidics 5, 044119 (2011)

Microwell perfusion array for high-throughput, long-term imaging of clonal growth

Huaying Chen, Jingjing Li, Han Zhang, Musen Li, Gary Rosengarten, and Robert E. Nordon

The goal of this study was to optimize MPA parameters for high throughput clonal analysis of motile cells. This included an assessment of the biocompatibility of the perfusion system (buffers, tubing, cell culture substrates and media degradation), selection of a perfusion protocol, and analysis of the relationship between microwell seeding density and growth rate. Furthermore this study benchmarks the cell imaging system with respect to the number of clones that can be continuously imaged in parallel.

Biomicrofluidics 5, 044117 (2011)

An insulator-based dielectrophoretic microdevice for the simultaneous filtration and focusing of biological cells

Chun-Ping Jen and Wei-Fu Chen

This study proposes an insulator-based dielectrophoretic microdevice with effective filtration and focusing of biological cells. The proposed design does not require complicated flow controls for the filtration of dead cells and simultaneously focuses the viable cells, which have escaped from the upstream regions. The proposed microdevice is easy to operate and can be integrated with other biomedical applications.

Biomicrofluidics 5, 044105 (2011)

Sealing SU-8 microfluidic channels using PDMS

Zhiyi Zhang, Ping Zhao, Gaozhi Xiao, Benjamin R. Watts, and Changqing Xu

A simple method of irreversibly sealing SU-8 microfluidic channels using PDMS is reported in this paper, which was applied in fabricating SU-8 microfluidic-photonic integrated devices, and the obtained devices were tested to show desirable performance.

Biomicrofluidics 5, 046503 (2011)