Author: Jim
Professor McGrath holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State and a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering from MIT. He earned a PhD in Biological Engineering from Harvard/MIT's Division of Health Sciences and Technology. He then trained as a Distinguished Post-doctoral Fellow in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University. Professor McGrath has been on the Biomedical Engineering faculty at the University of Rochester since 2001 where he also served as the director of the graduate program in BME for more than a decade and currently serves as Associate Director of the URNano microfab and metrology core. Professor McGrath also has faculty affiliations with many other programs at UR including the Material Research Program, the Environmental Health and Sciences Center, the Biochemistry and Biophysics program, and the Musculoskeletal Research Center. McGrath's graduate, post-doctoral, and early faculty research was focused on quantitative experiments and mathematical modeling of cell migration covering molecular, cellular, and multi-cellular phenomena. This was true until 2007 when he, along with Professor Philippe Fauchet (now Dean at Vanderbilt) and PhD students Tom Gaborski (RIT) and Chris Streimer (Adarza), discovered a means to self-assembled nanopores in 15 nm thick free-standing silicon and demonstrated the remarkable transport properties of the new material in a Nature paper. This seminal discovery led to the creation of the multidisciplinary Nanomembrane Research Group (NRG) and the founding of SiMPore Inc. in the same year. The NRG and SiMPore have been dedicated to the advancement of ultrathin membrane technologies and exploring all of their potential applications ever since. This blog also dates back to 2007 and has had contributions from more than 100 students, faculty, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. It contains over 2,500 pages and posts logging progress large and small over all these years. Yet somehow it feels like we are just getting started.

Diffusion Cell New Designs

Here are two new designs for the new diffusion cells. Design_2 could be a better solution as it separates the two connections and uses screws to make the wire contacts to outside circuit. Please feed back any ideas to improve

Posted in NRG Tagged with: , , ,

TEM on SiO2 coated membranes

As per Jim’s suggestion, I coated wafers 335 and 341 with 40.6nm SiO2 on top and 42nm SiO2 at backside. The membrane cells have been passed to Anant and Maryna for chemical stability and air flow tests. Today I got

Posted in NRG

UV/Ozone cleaner operation reminder

Maryna told me the UV/ozone cleaner did not work (the blue light in front of the chamber did not light up) when she was working with Dave today. I quickly checked the machine and it is actually working properly. The

Posted in NRG

TEM images of actin filaments on Formvar grid

Here are images of actin filaments on Formvar coated 200 mesh nickel grid. Actin filaments were polymerized exactly as before. TEM sample preparation procedure is: 1. add actin solution on Formvar grid and wait 90 sec 2. remove liquid, add

Posted in NRG

Permeabilities vs. pore sizes for ideal membranes

Because our membranes are not mono-disperse, we often debate the relative contribution of large pores vs small pores in both diffusive and convective separations. Indeed it is possible that the way pores contribute to transport in these two modes is

Posted in NRG

4-point probe measurement results

Dave and I characterized the membrane samples using the 4-point probe system at Kodak research Lab. It is NOT the previously discussed micro-4-point probe. The spacing between two probes is about 2mm. We first tested a quarter bare wafer#388 at

Posted in NRG

Cell Growth on pnc-Si

A couple of summers ago a Penn State summer student named Joe Fantuzo was working in the lab measuring cell growth rates and cell spreading on pnc-Si membranes and comparing the results to glass coverslips and tissue culture grade plastic.

Posted in NRG

UV/Ozone is finally ready

Our two O2 regulators arrived this week (it figures we would have two to arrive within a day of each other after waiting for weeks to have one). Tom and Lingyun got to work right away. The image below shows

Posted in NRG

The future of the Goergen Hall Basement

Coming to a basement near you by the end of 2008 (assuming no delays that is). Pretty exciting in my opinion. 

Posted in NRG

Resistance of coated membrane cells

Samples are from wafers #316 and 318. This is the first time for wafer scale deposition. Processing conditions:1) chamber base pressure @ 6×10-7 Torr (previously @ 5×10-6 Torr)2) 15nm Ti + 15nm Au, no vacuum break Estimated “cell resistance”: about

Posted in NRG
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