It is the goal of the Leukocyte counter to have the cells align to a membrane with a one cell to one pore ratio. Ideally the cells would be able to take up pores without using all the pores on…
Category: NRG
Shear Stress in a Rectangular Channel
As I am hoping to promote tighter junctions between endothelial cells in my device, I am trying to create an environment that produces shear stress on the endothelial cells. Shear stress up-regulates the pathways that promote tight junctions (Tzima et…
Posted in NRG
Low-cost plasma treatment
Oxygen plasma cleaners are a very commonly used tool when bonding PDMS sheets to materials such as PDMS, glass, Si, and SiN. Even though plasma cleaners have proven to be highly effective and reliable tools in this application, they continue…
Posted in NRG
Burst Pressure
In my last post we determined that there is an inverse relationship between porosity and burst pressure. I continued to dig further into other factors that affect the burst pressure of the membrane. Pure silicon was used in all the…
Posted in NRG
Surface Chemistry Modification for PEG
The goal of this project is to determine the viability of PEG as a structural support for large area nano porous membranes. This would enable lift-off vs. the current method of etching through the wafer. The ideal properties are that…
Posted in NRG
BBB Device Update
BBB Device Update We’ve identified a few areas in which we can improve upon the initial device seen in Booth et al (2012). Mainly: Endothelial TEER increases to an in vivo value, hopefully from increased astrocytic (pericytic?) support from the…
Posted in NRG
Leukocyte Isolation (Pt. 1)
The goal of our work is a low-cost, portable device that will perform rapid and efficient leukocyte count assays required for treatment of HIV positive patients. The device in mind will benefit from the advantages associated with microfluidic systems such…
Posted in NRG
Booth and Kim (2012) micro-BBB device
Here is the paper I reviewed at the NRG meeting on 06/19. Utah Group Micro BBB Device I’ve also included my presentation: BBB Device Presentation This week I’m working on designing the basal and apical chambers, considering the necessary shear…
Posted in NRG
BSA Retention in Single Channel Dialyzer
Regarding the single channel dialyzer chip with 20-nm thick nano-porous silicon membrane: 10 mm long, 300 µm deep, 500 µm wide channels. Now that we’ve shown that a measurable quantity of urea is filtered out of DI water in one…
Multi-annealing of free standing OSO stack (2)
Last time I showed that the sample with multi-annealing yielded higher porosity and larger average pore diameter than the sample with direct annealing. In this post, I further investigate the multi-annealing of free standing OSO stack (20/15/10) by varying the…
Posted in NRG
