This week I’ve added male connectors to my device. Originally, I had female-female tubing connections to the device, which were very prone to leaking around the insertion ports. Tejas suggested that I try printing out the male connectors to combat…
Author: Greg Madejski
Greg is a McGrath Lab alumnus (2010-2020) who incorporates nanomembranes into a variety of devices. Currently, he works on detecting microplastics as the CEO of Parverio inc.
Microfluidic Dose Response Assay
Sugiura 2010 (Anal. Chem) This paper details a PDMS microfluidic system to perform dose response assays (what I’m hoping to achieve over this summer). They use serial dilutions to get separate trials spanning six orders of magnitude, showing an optimal dosage…
Posted in NRG
Makerware 3d print Preview
One neat feature of the Makerware software is to visualize the printed layers before actually printing them. You can catch a lot of errors with this feature; I highly recommend it.
Posted in Protocols
Importing Gasket Geometries to Silhouette from Sketchup
We currently use Adobe Illustrator to design silicone gasket geometries for our microfluidic devices. Here is a quick way to do a similar thing from sketchup. The advantage of this procedure is that you can create a complete 3d model of…
Posted in Protocols, Protocols (Public)
Culture Attempt #1 on custom PLA transwells for SEPCONS
Meghan and I continued to experiment with our PLA printed transwells. We came up with a protocol that has some cells growing on pnc-Si (albeit not to confluence yet), and less so on nonporous Silicon nitride. In the gallery below…
Posted in NRG
Animations with Sketchup
Sketchup is a great tool for showing off your microsystem ideas, complete with animation capabilities. However, it cannot intrinsically move objects around, show how water flows in a channel, or insert pieces into a slot, which are useful for understanding…
Posted in Protocols
Makerbot2 printed Transwells for SEPCON chips
In Nottingham this summer, I attempted to use a Makerbot2 printer to create culture devices for SEPCON chips. I had varying degrees of success, but I was not able to get a good seal between the PLA and gaskets using…
Posted in NRG
50/50 Si/MgF2 Freestanding film
Previous posts: Theory Deposition Etching Imaging First Freestanding Membranes I had previously made free-standing nanomembranes that were mostly MgF2 according to the EDAX scan of the freestanding region: I hoped to duplicate my results and send over a few more samples to Nottingham. With…
Posted in NRG
Free-Standing, Mostly MgF2 Nanoporous Material
Previous posts: Theory Deposition Etching Imaging I have tinkered with the etch recipe some more, adding Argon to help prevent polymer formation (adding 5% O2 was not enough). The current recipe is 200 mTorr (100 mTorr Ar, 5 mTorr O2, 95 mTorr CHF3) at…
Posted in NRG
MgF2 + Si3N4 Nanomembrane Images
Here are some images of deposited magnesium fluoride films on 50 nanonitride:
Posted in NRG
