On Monday I presented our progress on the hemodialysis project for the Coulter Foundation. They seemed very pleased with our progress and impressed with our team. Its a tough crowd and for the first time, I sensed they had confidence…
Category: NRG
Hemocompatibility of pncSi – Complement Activation Studies
This is the third set of studies to assess the hemocompatibility of pncSi. It aims towards a quantitative analysis of the formation of the complement protein C3a in the blood upon interaction with pncSi surfaces. Biological Motivation: Complement proteins help…
Posted in NRG
Principles of Mold Making for Microfluidic Rapid Prototyping
See Microfluidic Mold Making for instructions. I have assembled 3 more Barrett Chamber/ SC114 pnc-Si microfluidic devices this week. Currently, there are 2 Barrett chambers remaining and the mold is missing. The mask to make the mold still exists, however,…
Posted in NRG
Barrett Chamber Flow Visualization
Barrett Chamber Flow Visualization For my lab rotation here, I was tasked with visualizing the flow of blood/blood-like objects across the 1st generation Barrett chambers. The design of the chamber is seen below. Some key characteristics are that the chamber…
Posted in NRG
Microfluidics in Hemodialysis Project
The purpose of the fluidics in our hemodialysis system is to move the sample to and the retentate away from the membranes. The dialysate (permeate, filtrate) will be handled passively in the initial designs and therefore do not require fluidic…
Morphology evolution in pnc-Si membrane(2)
In the last post, we have discussed the intermediate state of the membranes which shows the irregular shape pores and silicon nanocrystals after annealed at 700C. Last week I did a quick test on the same nitride membrane with a…
Posted in NRG
Hemocompatibility of pncSi – Platelet activation studies
This is the first set of studies to assess the hemocompatibility of pncSi surfaces based on the paper by Fissell and Roy. It looks for the behavior of platelets in the plasma upon interaction with pncSi surfaces. Biological Motivation: Platelets…
Posted in NRG
MEM Elution Assays on pnc-Si Membranes – Rotation Summary
The minimum essential medium elution assay with neutral red is a commonly used method for determining the cytotoxicity of a material, typically polymers1-4. The neutral red dye is only endocytosed by viable cells; relative viability can be determined by absorbance…
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Morphology evolution in pnc-Si membrane
In this post, I would like to sum up all different annealing scenarios, which corresponding to different morphologies of the pnc-Si membrane so far we have observed. It should be very helpful to understand the evolution of the pore formation…
Posted in NRG
pnc-Si membrane from silicon nitride and silicon oxide system
Now we already confirmed that pores are able to form in both oxide/silicon/oxide and nitride/silicon/nitride system. Here comes an interesting question- how about nitride/silicon/oxide and oxide/silicon/nitride system? In the past week, another two different stacks including SiN(30nm)/ a-Si(25nm)/SiO2(30nm) and SiO2(30nm)/a-Si(25nm)/SiN(30nm)…
Posted in NRG
