Because of Harold Smith’s project, Rachel and I have been working on various methods to get proteins through a pnc-Si membrane and onto a polymer membrane. The particular system that Dr. Smith wants to study is very sensitive to ambient…
Category: NRG
Discoloration – Cell Media
I’ve been learning the discoloration protocol from Karl and Anant and finally have some pictures of my own to show. We got a couple of new media (RPMI and DMEM/F12) last week in order to grow the cells I’m getting…
Posted in NRG
SiO2 evaporation at RIT
Today Barrett and I processed SiO2 deposition at RIT. This process was actually delayed due to the cleanroom scrubber failure last week. We deposited 30nm SiO2 on both sides of three wafers, #335, 341, and 345. Earlier in March, I…
Posted in NRG
"Separations" with pinholes
One question we recently had was what does it look like when we perform a separation experiment when a membrane has a pinhole. I selected two membranes off 621 that appeared to have pinholes on both slits. I applied 1:2…
Posted in NRG
Pore Processing Comparison of W615
In order to support the idea that RTP treatment does not change membrane pore characteristics (as shown by Anant in the rhodamine diffusion study) I processed TEM samples that were not treated, RTPed in Ar, for 5 minutes at 800C,…
Update of W637
Dave delivered W637, a wafer made using the sample recipe as W504, to us today. This wafer has a high occurrence of single pinholes, with only 12 samples pinhole-free. I also noticed some odd features on the membranes, shown below.…
Diffusion tests with Nylon and Nitrocellulose
Last week I tried to diffuse Cytochrome C through our membranes onto PVDF and PES membranes to see if we can detect protein adsorption on the other membranes. The trial illustrated that cytochrome c will diffuse through our membranes and…
Posted in NRG
Polymer deposition updates
The 20nm deposited polymer film permeability is approximately 1e6 barrers, while bulk polyimide permeability is less then 100. So the experimental value is too high. There are two possibilities to explain it: First, the pores are partially open and 20…
Posted in NRG
Sepcon-Transwell hybrid devices
I’ve been working with the Corning transwell inserts and our SepCon units a bit recently. The addition of the Dremel last week has allowed better control while cutting the transwells, even without the right angle attachment (which will allow cutting…
DNA separations
Bill Bernhard’s group approached us about using pnc-Si membranes to separate DNA species by diffusion. Bill’s lab studies the effects of ionizing radiation (ex. X-rays, gamma rays, UV light) on DNA using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). There are three major…
Posted in NRG
