CAREER: Massively Parallel Light-Driven Droplet Manipulation Platform for Large Scale Multiplexed Single Cell Analysis

本研究的目的是开发一种大规模并行液滴操作平台，该平台允许大规模并行光驱动操作不混溶油中的水性液滴，用于多重化学和生物医学筛选和分析。该方法是利用一种新的浮置电极光电子镊子（FEOET）机制，允许通过在低成本的低光强光电导材料上的直接光学图像对电绝缘油中的电场进行光学调制。智力优势：FE 0 ET设备提供了独特的光学致动机制，其可以允许以低至lW/mm 2的光强度驱动微米至毫米的液滴。这种极低的光功率要求将允许单个LED二极管并行处理一百万个液滴。它还开辟了使用低成本光电导聚合物作为光电导层的可能性，这可以大大降低大规模芯片实验室系统的制造成本，该系统容纳数百万个含有多路复用药物组合的液滴，用于大规模和高通量筛选。 更广泛的影响：在这个项目的过程中开发的结果和专业知识将被纳入PI的教学活动在本科和研究生水平。PI还将与加州大学洛杉矶分校工程学院的卓越工程和多样性中心（CEED）提出夏季研究实习计划，以招募当地社区学院的代表性不足的学生，以构建一个“虚拟化学实验室”，允许通过互联网远程控制PI实验室中的真实的液滴。

The objective of this research is to develop a massively parallel droplet manipulation platform that allows massively parallel light driven manipulation of aqueous droplets in immiscible oil for multiplexed chemical and biomedical screening and analyses. The approach is to utilize a novel floating electrode optoelectronic tweezers (FEOET) mechanism that permits optical modulation of electric field in electrically insulating oil via direct optical images on low-cost photoconductive materials with low light intensity. Intellectual Merit: FEOET devices provide a unique optical actuation mechanism that could allows driving a micrometer to millimeter droplets with light intensity as low as 1 W/mm2. This extremely low optical power requirement would permit a single LED diode to process one million droplets in parallel. It also opens up the possibility to use low-cost photoconductive polymers as the photoconductive layers that could dramatically reduces the fabrication cost for large-scale lab-on-a-chip system housing millions of droplets containing multiplexed drug combinations for large scale and high throughput screening. Broader Impact: Results and expertise developed during the course of this project will be incorporated into the PI's teaching activities at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The PI will also propose Summer Research Internship Programs with Center for Excellence in Engineering and Diversity (CEED), an excellent outreach program housed in UCLA Engineering School, to recruit under-represented students from local community colleges for constructing a "Virtual Chemical Lab" allowing remote control of real droplets in PI's lab via Internet.