Name: fabrication of 3d carbon microelectromechanical systems (c-mems)
Uploaded: 2017-06-17T13:00:00.000+00:00
Duration: 8 min 1 s
Description: Watch this Scientific Journal Video about Fabrication of 3D Carbon Microelectromechanical Systems C-MEMS at JoVE.com

This work was supported by Technologico de Monterrey and the University of California at Irvine.

1. 3D Human Hair-derived Carbon Structure Fabrication
NOTE: Use personal protective equipment. Follow laboratory instructions to use the instruments and to work inside the laboratory.
<ol>
	<li>Prepare collected human hair by washing it with DI water and drying it with N2 gas.</li>
	<li>Arrange the hairs as desired, such as in parallel strands, cross over, with two hairs wound together, etc.</li>
	<li>Attach the hairs to a silicon substrate using SU8 or keep them directly in a ceramic boat.</li>
	<li>Place the hair-attached silicon substrate or boat into a furnace.</li>
	<li>Turn on the furnace and open the valve of an inert gas (N2) tank. 
	NOTE: The optimal gas flow rate is dependent upon the volume of the furnace tube. A 6 L/min flow rate was applied for a tube volume of 6 L. To establish a completely inert environment in the furnace tube, a gas flow rate 1.5 times higher than the optimal gas flow rate was applied for the first 15 min.</li>
	<li>Set the parameters, including maximum pyrolysis temperature, temperature ramp rate, and inert gas flow rate, and run the furnace.
	<ol>
		<li>For example, increase temperature from room temperature to 300 &#176;C at a 5 &#176;C/min ramp rate. Keep it at 300 &#176;C for 1 h for stabilization. Further increase the temperature to 900 &#176;C and maintain it for 1 h more for carbonization.</li>
		<li>Cool the furnace down to 300 &#176;C at a rate of 10 &#176;C/min and turn off the heater of the furnace, as the controlled cooling is not necessary after 300 &#176;C. Leave the samples in the furnace until the temperature reaches room temperature by N2 flow only.</li>
	</ol>
	</li>
	<li>Turn off the furnace and gas flow upon the completion of the pyrolysis process.</li>
	<li>Take the samples out of the furnace.</li>
</ol>
2. 3D Polymer Structure Fabrication: Photolithography
<ol>
	<li>Design a 2D layout of the desired 3D photoresist structure using an appropriate software package and prepare the printed mask (i.e., a polyethylene photofilm mask). 
	NOTE: A commercial service was used to get the design printed. The size of the mask generally depends on the design.</li>
	<li>In a clean laboratory facility, turn on two hot plates and set the temperatures to 65 &#176;C and 95 &#176;C, respectively.</li>
	<li>Switch on a spin coater and a vacuum pump. Ensure that the vacuum pump is connected through a tube to the spinner head.</li>
	<li>Set the parameters of the two-step spin, such as the spinning speed, ramp, and duration. For the first step, set the spinning speed to 500 rpm, the ramp to 100 rpm/s, and the spin time to 10 s to begin the spin cycle. For the next step, set the spinning speed to 1,000 rpm, the ramp to 100 rpm/s, and the spin time to 30 s to evenly spread the photoresist.</li>
	<li>Place a substrate (i.e., a 4 inch x 4 inch and 550 &#181;m &#177; 25 &#181;m-thick Si wafer with a 1 &#181;m-thick SiO2 layer) at the center of the holder.</li>
	<li>Deposit photosensitive polymer (i.e., SU8 photoresist) directly onto the center of the substrate. Use enough to cover the surface.</li>
	<li>Push the &#34;vacuum&#34; button to hold the substrate.</li>
	<li>Push the &#34;run&#34; button to coat the substrate with SU8 and to achieve a final thickness of 250 &#181;m.</li>
	<li>After the completion of spinning process, press the &#34;vacuum&#34; button again to release the coated substrate from the holder.</li>
	<li>Hold the coated substrate carefully using a tweezer to keep the surface smooth and clean. Transfer the substrate directly onto the hot plate at 65 &#176;C temperature for 6 min and then onto the hot plate at 95 &#176;C temperature for 40 min (soft bake). 
	NOTE: Baking at 65 &#176;C is required to ensure the slow evaporation of the solvent, resulting in the better coating and better adhesion to the substrate, while baking at 95 &#176;C further densifies the SU8.</li>
	<li>In the meantime, press the switch to turn on the UV-exposure system and set the time of exposure to &#34;12 s&#34; using the set button in the system. 
	NOTE: For a 250 &#181;m-thick SU8 layer, the exposure energy must be 360 mJ/cm2.</li>
	<li>Once the baking step (step 2.10) is completed, put the substrate into the UV-exposure system and place the printed side of a photomask (from step 2.1) onto it. Use the whole mask area to cover the coated substrate and press gently to ensure that there is no gap between the mask and substrate.</li>
	<li>Expose the SU8-coated substrate to UV radiation through the photomask using predefined UV settings.</li>
	<li>Heat the substrate again by placing it directly on the hotplate at 65 &#176;C for 5 min and at 95 &#176;C for 14 min for a post-exposure bake (PEB). 
	NOTE: The PEB increases the degree of cross-linking in the UV-exposed areas and makes the coating more resistant to solvents in the development step.</li>
	<li>Remove the unexposed photoresist regions by dipping the substrate in the dedicated developer solution, placed in a beaker, for 20 min. Continuously shake the solution (carefully) to ensure the complete removal of the un-exposed resist areas.</li>
	<li>Dry the developed structures by holding the substrate and blowing nitrogen or compressed air onto it.</li>
	<li>Inspect the wafer under a microscope with 50X magnification to compare the patterns transferred to the photoresist with the desired patterns.</li>
</ol>
3. 3D Carbon Structure Fabrication: Pyrolysis
<ol>
	<li>Place the samples prepared using photolithography (steps 2.1-2.17) inside a pressurized, open-ended tube furnace.</li>
	<li>Turn on the furnace and set the parameters for pyrolysis, as mentioned above in step 1. Repeat the process from step 1.6-1.8.</li>
	<li>Handle the samples carefully using tweezers and proceed to characterization.</li>
</ol>

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The authors have nothing to disclose.

In this paper the methods for manufacturing a variety of carbon microstructures based on the pyrolysis of natural precursor materials or photo-patterned polymer structures were reported. The carbon materials resulting from both the traditional and non-conventional C-MEMS/C-NEMS processes are typically found to be glassy carbons. Glassy carbon is a widely used electrode material for electrochemistry and also for high-temperature applications. The microstructure of glassy carbon is composed of both crystalline and amorphou...

Carbon has many allotropes and, depending on the particular application, one of the following allotropes can be chosen: carbon nanotubes (CNTs), graphite, diamond, amorphous carbon, lonsdaleite, buckminsterfullerene (C60), fullerite (C540), fullerene (C70), and glassy carbon1,2,3,4. Glassy carbon is one of the most widely used allotropes because of its physical properties, including high isotropy. It also has the following properties: good electrical conductivity, low thermal expansion coefficient, and gas impermeability.
There has been a continuous search for carbon-rich precursor materials to obtain carbon structures. These precursors can be manmade materials or natural products that are available in particular shapes, and even include waste products. A wide variety of micro/nanostructures are formed via biological or environmental processes in nature, resulting in unique features that are extremely difficult to create using conventional manufacturing tools. As patterning took place naturally in this case, the synthesis of nanomaterials using natural and waste hydrocarbon precursors could be carried out using an easy, one-step process of thermal decomposition in an inert or vacuum atmosphere, called pyrolysis5. High-quality graphene, single-walled CNTs, multi-walled CNTs, and carbon dots have been produced by thermal decomposition or the pyrolysis of plant-derived precursors and wastes, including seeds, fibers, and oils, such as turpentine oil, sesame oil, neem oil (Azadirachta indica), eucalyptus oil, palm oil, and jatropha oil. Also, camphor products, tea-tree extracts, waste foods, insects, agro wastes, and food products have been utilized6,7,8,9 Recently, researchers have even used silk cocoons as a precursor material to prepare porous carbon microfibers10. Human hair, usually considered a waste material, was recently used by this team. It is made up of approximately 91% polypeptides, which contain more than 50% carbon; the rest are elements such as oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulphur11. Hair also comes with several interesting properties, such as very slow degradation, high tensile strength, high thermal insulation, and high elastic recovery. Recently, it has been used to prepare carbon flakes employed in supercapacitors12 and to create hollow carbon microfibers for electrochemical sensing13.
The machining of a bulk carbon material to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) structures is a difficult task, as the material is very brittle. Focused ion beam14,15 or reactive ion etching16 may be useful in this context, but they are expensive and time-consuming processes. Carbon microelectromechanical system (C-MEMS) technology, which is based on the pyrolysis of patterned polymeric structures, represents a versatile alternative. In the past two decades, C-MEMS and carbon nanoelectromechanical systems (C-NEMS) have received much attention because of the simple and inexpensive fabrication steps involved. The conventional C-MEMS fabrication process is carried out in two steps: (i) patterning a polymer precursor (e.g., a photoresist) with photolithography and (ii) pyrolysis of the patterned structures. Ultraviolet (UV)-curable polymer precursors, such as SU8 photoresists, are often used to pattern structures based on photolithography. In general, the photolithography process includes steps for spin coating, soft bake, UV exposure, post bake, and development. In the case of C-MEMS; silicon; silicon dioxide; silicon nitride; quartz; and, more recently, sapphire have been used as substrates. The photo-patterned polymer structures are carbonized at a high temperature (800-1,100 &#176;C) in an oxygen-free environment. At those elevated temperatures in a vacuum or inert atmosphere, all of the non-carbon elements are removed, leaving only carbon. This technique allows for the attainment of high-quality, glassy carbon structures, which are very useful for many applications, including electrochemical sensing17, energy storage18, triboelectric nanogeneration19, and electrokinetic particle manipulation20. Also, the fabrication of 3D microstructures with high aspect ratios using C-MEMS has become relatively easy and has led to a wide variety of carbon electrodes applications18,21,22,23, often replacing noble metal electrodes.
In this work, the recent development of a simple and cost-effective way to fabricate hollow carbon microfibers from human hair using non-conventional C-MEMS technology13 is introduced. The conventional SU8 polymer-based C-MEMS process is also described here. Specifically, the fabrication procedure for high-aspect ratio solids and hollow SU8 structures is described24.

<table><tbody><tr><td>SU8-2100</td><td>Microchem</td><td>Product number-Y1110750500L</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Spinner</td><td>Laurell Technologies Corporation</td><td>Model-WS650HZB-23NPP/UD3</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Hotplate</td><td>Torrey Pines Scientific</td><td>HS61</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>UV-exposer</td><td>Mercury Lamp, SYLVANIA</td><td>H44GS-100M, P/N-34-0054-01</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Photomask</td><td>CAD/Art</td><td></td><td>No number</td></tr><tr><td>Developer&amp;nbsp;</td><td>Microchem</td><td>Y020100 4000L&amp;nbsp;</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>DI water system</td><td>Milli Q</td><td>ZOOQOVOTO</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>IPA</td><td>CTR Sientific</td><td>CTR 01244</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>N&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt; gas</td><td>AOC Mexico</td><td></td><td>No number</td></tr><tr><td>Furnace</td><td>PEO 601, ATV Technologie GMBH</td><td>Model-PEO 601, Serial no.-195</td><td></td></tr><tr><td>Si/SiO&lt;sub&gt;2&lt;/sub&gt;</td><td>Noel Technologies</td><td></td><td></td></tr></tbody></table>

fabrication of 3d carbon microelectromechanical systems (c-mems)

A wide range of carbon sources are available in nature, with a variety of micro-/nanostructure configurations. Here, a novel technique to fabricate long and hollow glassy carbon microfibers derived from human hairs is introduced. The long and hollow carbon structures were made by the pyrolysis of human hair at 900 &#176;C in a N2 atmosphere. The morphology and chemical composition of natural and pyrolyzed human hairs were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and electron-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), respectively, to estimate the physical and chemical changes due to pyrolysis. Raman spectroscopy was used to confirm the glassy nature of the carbon microstructures. Pyrolyzed hair carbon was introduced to modify screen-printed carbon electrodes ; the modified electrodes were then applied to the electrochemical sensing of dopamine and ascorbic acid. Sensing performance of the modified sensors was improved as compared to the unmodified sensors. To obtain the desired carbon structure design, carbon micro-/nanoelectromechanical system (C-MEMS/C-NEMS) technology was developed. The most common C-MEMS/C-NEMS fabrication process consists of two steps: (i) the patterning of a carbon-rich base material, such as a photosensitive polymer, using photolithography; and (ii) carbonization through the pyrolysis of the patterned polymer in an oxygen-free environment. The C-MEMS/NEMS process has been widely used to develop microelectronic devices for various applications, including in micro-batteries, supercapacitors, glucose sensors, gas sensors, fuel cells, and triboelectric nanogenerators. Here, recent developments of a high-aspect ratio solid and hollow carbon microstructures with SU8 photoresists are discussed. The structural shrinkage during pyrolysis was investigated using confocal microscopy and SEM. Raman spectroscopy was used to confirm the crystallinity of the structure, and the atomic percentage of the elements present in the material before and after pyrolysis was measured using EDX.

A schematic of the fabrication process for human hair-derived hollow carbon microfibers is shown in Figure 1. The carbonized human hair was characterized using SEM to estimate the shrinkage. The hair diameter shrank from 82.88 &#177; 0.003 &#181;m to 31.42 &#177; 0.003 &#181;m due to the pyrolysis. Scanning electron microscopic (SEM) images of various patterns made using hair-derived carbon microfibers are shown in Figure 2. The ...

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Fabrication of 3D Carbon Microelectromechanical Systems C-MEMS

Long and hollow glassy carbon microfibers were fabricated based on the pyrolysis of a natural product, human hair. The two fabrication steps of carbon microelectromechanical and carbon nanoelectromechanical systems, or C-MEMS and C-NEMS, are: (i) photolithography of a carbon-rich polymer precursor and (ii) pyrolysis of the patterned polymer precursor.

Fabrication of 3D Carbon Microelectromechanical Systems (C-MEMS)

A wide range of carbon sources are available in nature, with a variety of micro-/nanostructure configurations. Here, a novel technique to fabricate long ...

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12.0K Views.  Tecnologico de Monterrey.  Lange en holle glasachtige koolstofmicrofibers werden vervaardigd op basis van de pyrolyse van een natuurlijk product, menselijk haar. De twee fabricage stappen van koolstofmicro-elektromechanische en koolstofnanoelectromechanische systemen, of C-MEMS en C-NEMS, zijn: (i) fotolithografie van een koolstofrijke polymeervoorloper en (ii) pyrolyse van de gevormde polymeervoorloper. 

Video: Fabrication of 3D Carbon Microelectromechanical Systems C-MEMS

Fabrication, Densification, and Replica Molding of 3D Carbon Nanotube Microstructures

The introduction of new materials and processes to microfabrication has, in large part, enabled many important advances in microsystems, lab-on-a-chip devices, and their applications. In particular, capabilities for cost-effective fabrication of polymer microstructures were transformed by the advent of soft lithography and other micromolding techniques 1, 2, and this led a revolution in applications of microfabrication to biomedical engineering and biology. Nevertheless, it remains challenging to fabricate microstructures with well-defined nanoscale surface textures, and to fabricate arbitrary 3D shapes at the micro-scale. Robustness of master molds and maintenance of shape integrity is especially important to achieve high fidelity replication of complex structures and preserving their nanoscale surface texture. The combination of hierarchical textures, and heterogeneous shapes, is a profound challenge to existing microfabrication methods that largely rely upon top-down etching using fixed mask templates. On the other hand, the bottom-up synthesis of nanostructures such as nanotubes and nanowires can offer new capabilities to microfabrication, in particular by taking advantage of the collective self-organization of nanostructures, and local control of their growth behavior with respect to microfabricated patterns. 
Our goal is to introduce vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs), which we refer to as CNT "forests", as a new microfabrication material. We present details of a suite of related methods recently developed by our group: fabrication of CNT forest microstructures by thermal CVD from lithographically patterned catalyst thin films; self-directed elastocapillary densification of CNT microstructures; and replica molding of polymer microstructures using CNT composite master molds. In particular, our work shows that self-directed capillary densification ("capillary forming"), which is performed by condensation of a solvent onto the substrate with CNT microstructures, significantly increases the packing density of CNTs. This process enables directed transformation of vertical CNT microstructures into straight, inclined, and twisted shapes, which have robust mechanical properties exceeding those of typical microfabrication polymers. This in turn enables formation of nanocomposite CNT master molds by capillary-driven infiltration of polymers. The replica structures exhibit the anisotropic nanoscale texture of the aligned CNTs, and can have walls with sub-micron thickness and aspect ratios exceeding 50:1. Integration of CNT microstructures in fabrication offers further opportunity to exploit the electrical and thermal properties of CNTs, and diverse capabilities for chemical and biochemical functionalization 3.

We present methods for fabrication of patterned microstructures of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs), and their use as master molds for production of polymer microstructures with organized nanoscale surface texture. The CNT forests are densified by condensation of solvent onto the substrate, which significantly increases their packing density and enables self-directed formation of 3D shapes.

The introduction of new materials and processes to microfabrication has, in large part, enabled many important advances in microsystems, lab-on-a-chip ...

Microfabricated Platforms for Mechanically Dynamic Cell Culture

The ability to systematically probe in vitro cellular response to combinations of mechanobiological stimuli for tissue engineering, drug discovery or fundamental cell biology studies is limited by current bioreactor technologies, which cannot simultaneously apply a variety of mechanical stimuli to cultured cells. In order to address this issue, we have developed a series of microfabricated platforms designed to screen for the effects of mechanical stimuli in a high-throughput format. In this protocol, we demonstrate the fabrication of a microactuator array of vertically displaced posts on which the technology is based, and further demonstrate how this base technology can be modified to conduct high-throughput mechanically dynamic cell culture in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional culture paradigms.

In this protocol, we demonstrate the fabrication of a microactuator array of vertically displaced posts on which the technology is based, and how this base technology can be modified to conduct high-throughput mechanically dynamic cell culture in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional culture paradigms.

The ability to systematically probe in vitro cellular response to combinations of mechanobiological stimuli for tissue engineering, drug discovery or ...

Bioengineering

Micro-masonry for 3D Additive Micromanufacturing

Transfer printing is a method to transfer solid micro/nanoscale materials (herein called &#8216;inks&#8217;) from a substrate where they are generated to a different substrate by utilizing elastomeric stamps. Transfer printing enables the integration of heterogeneous materials to fabricate unexampled structures or functional systems that are found in recent advanced devices such as flexible and stretchable solar cells and LED arrays. While transfer printing exhibits unique features in material assembly capability, the use of adhesive layers or the surface modification such as deposition of self-assembled monolayer (SAM) on substrates for enhancing printing processes hinders its wide adaptation in microassembly of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) structures and devices. To overcome this shortcoming, we developed an advanced mode of transfer printing which deterministically assembles individual microscale objects solely through controlling surface contact area without any surface alteration. The absence of an adhesive layer or other modification and the subsequent material bonding processes ensure not only mechanical bonding, but also thermal and electrical connection between assembled materials, which further opens various applications in adaptation in building unusual MEMS devices.

This paper introduces a 3D additive micromanufacturing strategy (termed &#8216;micro-masonry&#8217;) for the flexible fabrication of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) structures and devices. This approach involves transfer printing-based assembly of micro/nanoscale materials in conjunction with rapid thermal annealing-enabled material bonding techniques.

Transfer printing is a method to transfer solid micro/nanoscale materials (herein called &#8216;inks&#8217;) from a substrate where they are generated to ...

Using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to Develop Diagnostic Tools

Using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems MEMS to Develop Diagnostic Tools

I'm U De Mercy, I'm the principal investigator of Bio Stick MAMs in Medicine Labs. I did my PhD at Stanford University in electrical engineering. I did a postdoc at Harvard Medical School at MGH working on bio acoustic MAMs or mostly bio MAs.And now I'm continuing as a faculty at Harvard Medical School at Harvard MIT Health Sciences and Technology. And continuing with my research that I enjoy very much. The work that I did during my PhD was very much related to droplets and using acoustics to generate precise size droplets and control their location and position to deposit very sensitive polymers.Now we apply similar technologies to encapsulate cells in droplets and then position them on the surfaces for various applications in tissue engineering to print cells on the surfaces to pattern cells. Also, there are applications where you want to see that you can encapsulate few cells or a single cell or from the same population and to see the differences between the same population from one cell to another there being able to encapsulate cells in droplets at high throughput rates like 10, 000 cells per second kind of rates becomes very important and very useful to understand biological problems. So my research currently has two legs, I would say.One is this cell encapsulation work that I just talked about. How do we pack a cell in a droplet that's, and how can we do this repeatedly and reliably and without harming the cells? So after the cell is ejected or encapsulated in the droplet, we should be able to precisely located on a surface the cell should be functional and alive and viable.It shouldn't be harmed by the effects of ejection and so forth. So currently we have a system where we use acoustic drop focused waves to generate these droplets from open pools where we can encapsulate down to single cells in these really small droplets that are comparable to the cell size. That's very exciting in terms of applying this to cell printing and tissue engineering.The other side of my research is again using these MAMs micro electromechanical system technologies to develop low cost diagnostic tools. Mostly this research uses microfluidic approaches where we can introduce whole blood, very small volumes such as blood from a prick finger prick, less than 10 microliters that you can introduce to a chip. And from that blood we can encapsulate or you can capture certain sub-cellular populations from whole blood.Why is this important? Why should this be cheap for global health applications On top of the mountain in Africa, you want to be able to tell for a HIV patient, for instance, how many CD four T lymphocytes this patient has. Because World Health Organization says that below 200 CD four cells per microliter, you have to start treating the patients In the developed world, you use hundreds of thousands dollars of vert flow cytometers to be able to get this data.And it takes of course time to use and skill of course to be able to use these like huge table size machines. Our small chip can be introduced this small finger brick 10 microliters of whole blood and it'll capture the CD four cells using the surface protein affinities. And then you can rapidly count these cells that are captured because you know that there are CD four cells which are attached to CD four proteins antibodies on the surface of the chip.By controlling the flow rates and shear, you can make sure that the specificity and efficiency for these cell types are optimized. And there's of course always non specific binding, but by our sheer approaches we minimize these effects and make sure that between plus minus 10%errors, which is sufficient to make a diagnostic or prognostic decision on top mountain in Africa. So this has interesting applications for global health as well as these low cost techniques that are disposable can impact the developed world because now these fast blood tests which are really low cost can impact the tests that we use in the developed world.If they're optimized to higher levels of efficiency and specificity, which our initial data shows that they can be, then it'll definitely impact our lives. When I first finished my PhD, I knew more about microfluidics and that in MAMs more than anything else I could see, especially with the droplet application, I could see that if I could print cells and encapsulate cells or manipulate the few cells, single cells, that it'll have great applications in biotechnology area. And I was very interested in working on things that will actually impact people's lives.I used to apply these technologies to semiconductor industry, but then I wanted to to be useful directly to people. So I, that's what directed me towards problems in healthcare. And then that's why I made a big shift and came to a hospital, mass general hospital to the postdoc.And there, you know, I got exposed more and more to problems and it seems, and it's all clear that one of the biggest problems of the world today is global health and there comes illnesses like tuberculosis, HIV that kills thousands of people per day. And these people die not because the drugs are not there, but because there aren't enough diagnostic tools which is much more expensive than the existing drugs. So I know the technology side of the things very well.I get, I got exposed to the biological problems and the more I learned about them, the more I could see that I could make an impact. And that's how it all grew from there. And it's still continuing now.Like I seen biotechnology and in medicine there are like so many problems that actually directly cause our result into loss of people's lives and the technologies, the technology aspect of it and being able to apply it to real world medical problems is a great, I think path to follow. This is like how this whole biotechnology area I think is kind of growing and it's becoming very impactful. If you think about it, HIV cancer, those are big killers in the world.And current micro technologies, current approaches could maybe benefit from early detection of cancer by capturing these cells from blood or making it really cheap, which will make it available to masses. So all these things coming together, I think this whole microtechnology applications in healthcare in medicine could impact the future of human beings. So that's how all these things kind of come together I guess.And being in the Harvard MIT health sciences and technology where on one end you have the technology and on the other end you direct aspect, direct access to patients, direct access to doctors in Brigham and Women's Hospital where I work is a great environment. cause every person that you talk to have their problems and you could maybe it's coming from a different background, provide interesting solutions to those existing real world problems. So this is, I think how I see the whole perspective of how these medical problems meet the technology side.And we try to impact people's lives in a positive way. In single cell cap encapsulation or in cell encapsulation, the major challenge is to be able to encapsulate reliably and repeatably single cells. So you're ejecting 10, 000 hundred thousand cells per second.And how do you make sure that each droplet that you eject has a single cell? This statistics where you are changing the droplet size and minimizing the, optimizing the cell size over the droplet size, which goes into the old problem of packing spheres in a volume and what is the most efficient way to do it. So that's the biggest challenge in the cell printing area for from the technological side.The other aspect of it is now you can say print and precisely locate these cells. How can you generate these three dimensional tissues and how can you keep them alive and how can you transplant them? There comes in the biological end of the problems where you want to now exactly mimic the tissue.We have current approaches to be able to print an eyelet, a pancreas eyelet, and to be able to print using smooth muscle cells, a bladder tissue, directly mimicking what is in human or red bladder so that then we can make this tissue and test how well it performs compared to the real world existing native tissues. So that's the major challenge I guess by taking these novel technologies, how can you make this the ideal tissue that can be replaced, that can be transplanted, that's the, you know, biggest problem from the beginning because the control on single cell gives you the capability to precisely locate them. And then how do you kind of grow it from there?So it's something transplantable there where the impact of human life comes. So that's on that end, what the challenges are in the tissue engineering side of the things in southern encapsulation and in diagnostics using microfluidics, the challenge is to be able to capture a cell out of billions of cells. It's like you have a sugar particle in a salt can and you're trying to pull out that sugar particle and that's like one in a billion.So you, you're processing microliters to milliliters of whole blood and you want to be able to specifically and efficiently without any technological problems like clogging or any biological problems like non-specific binding, you want to be able to isolate at one cell out of billion cells in one microliter of whole blood, you have a few millions of cells. And for the CD four T lymphocyte case in that one microliter, we are after about thousand cells per microliter. So it's like one cell in a thousand kind of a problem where we have shown that it's doable.But when you want to go after circulating tumor cells for cancer, then the challenge becomes one in a billion. So to some summarize it, the challenge is how do we capture this one cell out of billions of other cells around it? And what is the technological aspects?What are the flow rates? What is the device design? What, what are the flow rates?What, what are the volumes of blood that has to be processed and how do you make sure that the cells you capture are the ones that you actually wanted to capture? All these aspects kind formed the whole challenge that can be summarized in one sentence, which is how do you capture this one rare cell out of billion others? So it's really a needle in a haystack kind of problem, which is exciting.And I think this is moving the technologies forward to address these problems is the current technological challenge. Being able to bring them to a level where they do the job that they're supposed to do is one thing. And then taking it to the clinic and making it a product has all different expertise such as being able to start a company, being able to patent these things and all those other aspects come into the picture.And I think we as scientists primarily don't have all of those skills that takes the products from desktop to products. So there comes in again, the importance of collaborations with people who have different backgrounds. And there are many technologies out there that I think could be very impactful and useful.They sometimes don't make it to the clinic or to the use of humankind either because it just didn't happen, wasn't the right time or other effects came into the picture that I just talked about. Or sometimes there isn't a direct link that you couldn't see that the technology could actually solve that problem. And the person who deals with the problem, or let's say the biologists or people in medicine are used to doing it one way for many years.And the people on the technology side mostly if you're not having a biotechnology focus, are not aware of the problems in medicine. So bringing these two sides together is a serious interdisciplinary research. And I think in the past years, the whole emphasis both at NIH level and that we see in research labs and universities is to generate interdisciplinary research.So people end up getting PhDs where they have to know multiple fields. For instance, for my PhD, I had to know acoustics, I had to know mems, I had to know microfluidics and I had to apply this for polymers. So now you see kinda very depth of knowledge in one field where you had to know actually three other fields quite well to be able to solve that problem.So I think the answer is in interdisciplinary research combined with people with business skills to make it available to use of the people, it's a whole big process and some inefficiencies that come in at certain locations. Cause that low percent of tech transfer.

Biology

Microfabrication of Chip-sized Scaffolds for Three-dimensional Cell cultivation

Using microfabrication technologies is a prerequisite to create scaffolds of reproducible geometry and constant quality for three-dimensional cell cultivation. These technologies offer a wide spectrum of advantages not only for manufacturing but also for different applications. The size and shape of formed cell clusters can be influenced by the exact and reproducible architecture of the microfabricated scaffold and, therefore, the diffusion path length of nutrients and gases can be controlled.1 This is unquestionably a useful tool to prevent apoptosis and necrosis of cells due to an insufficient nutrient and gas supply or removal of cellular metabolites.
Our polymer chip, called CellChip, has the outer dimensions of 2 x 2 cm with a central microstructured area. This area is subdivided into an array of up to 1156 microcontainers with a typical dimension of 300 m edge length for the cubic design (cp- or cf-chip) or of 300 m diameter and depth for the round design (r-chip).2
So far, hot embossing or micro injection moulding (in combination with subsequent laborious machining of the parts) was used for the fabrication of the microstructured chips. Basically, micro injection moulding is one of the only polymer based replication techniques that, up to now, is capable for mass production of polymer microstructures.3 However, both techniques have certain unwanted limitations due to the processing of a viscous polymer melt with the generation of very thin walls or integrated through holes. In case of the CellChip, thin bottom layers are necessary to perforate the polymer and provide small pores of defined size to supply cells with culture medium e.g. by microfluidic perfusion of the containers.
In order to overcome these limitations and to reduce the manufacturing costs we have developed a new microtechnical approach on the basis of a down-scaled thermoforming process. For the manufacturing of highly porous and thin walled polymer chips, we use a combination of heavy ion irradiation, microthermoforming and track etching. In this so called "SMART" process (Substrate Modification And Replication by Thermoforming) thin polymer films are irradiated with energetic heavy projectiles of several hundred MeV introducing so-called "latent tracks" Subsequently, the film in a rubber elastic state is formed into three dimensional parts without modifying or annealing the tracks. After the forming process, selective chemical etching finally converts the tracks into cylindrical pores of adjustable diameter.

We present two processes for the microfabrication of porous polymer chips for three-dimensional cell cultivation. The first one is hot embossing combined with a solvent vapour welding process. The second one uses a recently developed microthermoforming process combined with ion track technology leading to a significant simplification of manufacture.

Using microfabrication technologies is a prerequisite to create scaffolds of reproducible geometry and constant quality for three-dimensional cell ...

Compact Lens-less Digital Holographic Microscope for MEMS Inspection and Characterization

A micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) is a widely used component in many industries, including energy, biotechnology, medical, communications, and automotive. However, effective inspection and characterization metrology systems are needed to ensure the functional reliability of MEMS. This study presents a system based on digital holography as a tool for MEMS metrology. Digital holography has gained increasing attention in the past 20 years. With the fast development and decreasing cost of sensor arrays, resolution of such systems has increased broadening potential applications. Thus, it has attracted attention from both research and industry sides as a potential reliable tool for industrial metrology. Indeed, by recording the interference pattern between an object beam (which contains sample height information) and a reference beam on a CCD camera, one can retrieve the quantitative phase information of an object. However, most of digital holographic systems are bulky and thus not easy to implement on industry production lines. The novelty of the system presented is that it is lens-less and thus very compact. In this study, it is shown that the Compact Digital Holographic Microscope (CDHM) can be used to evaluate several characteristics typically consider as criteria in MEMS inspections. The surface profiles of MEMS in both static and dynamic conditions are presented. Comparison with AFM is investigated to validate the accuracy of the CDHM.

We present a compact reflection digital holographic system (CDHM) for inspection and characterization of MEMS devices. A lens-less design using a diverging input wave providing natural geometrical magnification is demonstrated. Both static and dynamic studies are presented.

A micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) is a widely used component in many industries, including energy, biotechnology, medical, communications, and ...

Fabrication of Carbon-Based Ionic Electromechanically Active Soft Actuators

Ionic electromechanically active capacitive laminates are a type of smart material that move in response to electrical stimulation. Due to the soft, compliant and biomimetic nature of this deformation, actuators made of the laminate have received increasing interest in soft robotics and (bio)medical applications. However, methods to easily fabricate the active material in large (even industrial) quantities and with a high batch-to-batch and within-batch repeatability are needed to transfer the knowledge from laboratory to industry. This protocol describes a simple, industrially scalable and reproducible method for the fabrication of ionic carbon-based electromechanically active capacitive laminates and the preparation of actuators made thereof. The inclusion of a passive and chemically inert (insoluble) middle layer (e.g., a textile-reinforced polymer network or microporous Teflon) distinguishes the method from others. The protocol is divided into five steps: membrane preparation, electrode preparation, current collector attachment, cutting and shaping, and actuation. Following the protocol results in an active material that can, for example, compliantly grasp and hold a randomly shaped object as demonstrated in the article.

This article describes a fast and simple manufacturing process of ionic electromechanically active composite materials for actuators in biomedical, biomimetic and soft robotics applications. The key fabrication steps, their importance for the actuators&#39; final properties, and some of the main characterization techniques are described in detail.

Ionic electromechanically active capacitive laminates are a type of smart material that move in response to electrical stimulation. Due to the soft, ...

Fabrication of Micro-Patterned Chip with Controlled Thickness for High-Throughput Cryogenic Electron Microscopy

A major limitation for the efficient and high-throughput structure analysis of biomolecules using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is the difficulty of preparing cryo-EM samples with controlled ice thickness at the nanoscale. The silicon (Si)-based chip, which has a regular array of micro-holes with graphene oxide (GO) window patterned on a thickness-controlled silicon nitride (SixNy) film, has been developed by applying microelectromechanical system (MEMS) techniques. UV photolithography, chemical vapor deposition, wet and dry etching of the thin film, and drop-casting of 2D nanosheet materials were used for mass-production of the micro-patterned chips with GO windows. The depth of the micro-holes is regulated to control the ice thickness on-demand, depending on the size of the specimen for cryo-EM analysis. The favorable affinity of GO toward biomolecules concentrates the biomolecules of interest within the micro-hole during cryo-EM sample preparation. The micro-patterned chip with GO windows enables high-throughput cryo-EM imaging of various biological molecules, as well as inorganic nanomaterials.

A newly developed micro-patterned chip with graphene oxide windows is fabricated by applying microelectromechanical system techniques, enabling efficient and high-throughput cryogenic electron microscopy imaging of various biomolecules and nanomaterials.

A major limitation for the efficient and high-throughput structure analysis of biomolecules using cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is the ...

An Additive Manufacturing Technique for the Facile and Rapid Fabrication of Hydrogel-based Micromachines with Magnetically Responsive Components

Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-based hydrogels are biocompatible hydrogels that have been approved for use in humans by the FDA. Typical PEG-based hydrogels have simple monolithic architectures and often function as scaffolding materials for tissue engineering applications. More sophisticated structures typically take a long time to fabricate and do not contain moving components. This protocol describes a photolithography method that allows for facile and rapid microfabrication of PEG structures and devices. This strategy involves an in-house developed fabrication stage that allows for the rapid fabrication of 3D structures by building upwards in a layer-by-layer fashion. Independent moving components can also be aligned and assembled onto support structures to form integrated devices. These independent components are doped with superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles that are sensitive to magnetic actuation. In this manner, the fabricated devices can be actuated using external magnets to yield movement of the components within. Hence, this technique allows for the fabrication of sophisticated MEMS-like devices (micromachines) that are composed entirely out of a biocompatible hydrogel, able to function without an onboard power source, and respond to a contact-less method of actuation. This manuscript describes the fabrication of both the fabrication set-up as well as the step-by-step method for the microfabrication of these hydrogels-based MEMS-like devices.

An additive manufacturing strategy for processing UV-crosslinkable hydrogels has been developed. This strategy allows for the layer-by-layer assembly of microfabricated hydrogel structures as well as the assembly of independent components, yielding integrated devices containing moving components that are responsive to magnetic actuation.

Polyethylene glycol (PEG)-based hydrogels are biocompatible hydrogels that have been approved for use in humans by the FDA. Typical PEG-based hydrogels ...

Fabrication of a Multiplexed Artificial Cellular MicroEnvironment Array

Cellular microenvironments consist of a variety of cues, such as growth factors, extracellular matrices, and intercellular interactions. These cues are well orchestrated and are crucial in regulating cell functions in a living system. Although a number of researchers have attempted to investigate the correlation between environmental factors and desired cellular functions, much remains unknown. This is largely due to the lack of a proper methodology to mimic such environmental cues in vitro, and simultaneously test different environmental cues on cells. Here, we report an integrated platform of microfluidic channels and a nanofiber array, followed by high-content single-cell analysis, to examine stem cell phenotypes altered by distinct environmental factors. To demonstrate the application of this platform, this study focuses on the phenotypes of self-renewing human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs). Here, we present the preparation procedures for a nanofiber array and the microfluidic structure in the fabrication of a Multiplexed Artificial Cellular MicroEnvironment (MACME) array. Moreover, overall steps of the single-cell profiling, cell staining with multiple fluorescent markers, multiple fluorescence imaging, and statistical analyses, are described.

This article describes the detailed methodology to prepare a Multiplexed Artificial Cellular MicroEnvironment (MACME) array for high-throughput manipulation of physical and chemical cues mimicking in vivo cellular microenvironments and to identify the optimal cellular environment for human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) with single-cell profiling.

Cellular microenvironments consist of a variety of cues, such as growth factors, extracellular matrices, and intercellular interactions. These cues are ...

Fabrication of 3D Carbon Microelectromechanical Systems (C-MEMS)

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