Here are some more images from my ongoing cell culture project. My previous work and protocols: ZO-1 staining of confluent RPE cells on various MgF2 substrates I added twice the amount of primary antibody on these devices that I usually do (1:100…

Many, many thanks to Kilean Lucas and Brian McIntyre who enabled our metrology. We have desired to get 3d information about the structure of our nanopores. One method to do so is known as electron tomography, a technique which can…

As the title states, I partially etched some different material (Wafer 2238, 100 nm NPN) to create nanofeatures with blown out holes. With a thicker membrane, we can blow out the pores more (etch longer) without compromising the strength of…

This post is a continuation of the work in Partial Etch RIE Blows out NPN Pores and MgF2 Nanomembrane Fabrication on partially etched NPN substrates. We believe the underlying NPN template influences the shape of our SERS active nanostructures and therefore the…

I’ve been culturing RPE cells over here in Rochester for my MgF2 fabrication paper, in which the goal is to make a permeable Raman compatible cell substrate. My previous work had shown polarization of RPE cells (via-ZO-1 staining) on nanoporous…

This work is a continuation of my last post, Partial Etch RIE Blows out NPN Pores, where I take the process a step further and deposit MgF2 onto the newly opened substrates. I used the same etch recipe to blow out…

As the title states, this post is about shifting an arbitrary pore distribution in an NPN layer. Why would we want to do this? We believe that the underlying pore distribution and shape influences the properties of many of our…

Summary Statement: We have doubled our MgF2 yields (compared to nanoporous MgF2) by moving to thicker microporous membranes. While the increase in strength is more modest than initially expected, we have plenty of substrates for use in cell culture. Statistics: Window…