I/UCRC FRP: MicroSURF (MicroSuperhydrophobicUltraRapidFluidics) for Enhanced Diagnostics

通过利用非润湿超疏水表面上独特的流动物理，这项研究试图克服与操作极小体积的流体(微流体)相关的持久瓶颈。虽然微流控技术为早期和可部署的疾病诊断带来了很大的希望，但迄今为止，与这种精确操作相关的实际挑战阻碍了它的广泛传播。超疏水表面上的微流体可以解决许多疾病诊断问题，因为它实现了无损样品操作、新颖的流体力学特性、极快和可控的流动以及增强的混合。通过这项研究产生的知识和洞察力将通过阐明通过工程表面效应增强流动的基本机制来显著改进和推动微流体领域的发展。它还将使这些机制得以实际执行和部署，产生现实世界的影响。这项工作的更广泛影响包括在商品塑料中大规模制造超疏水表面的可能性，以及将它们整合到已经使用的微流控设备中的可能性。其他影响包括K-12科学和工程推广项目，其中一个名为“一百只小手”的项目是为儿童(5岁及以上)开发的，在这些项目中，他们可以设计和制作自己的超疏水积木，作为我们的“发明者工具箱”的一部分，同时通过随附的漫画书学习现代科学和工程概念。这项研究涉及通过标准卷对卷制造在商品塑料中大规模创建和实施超疏水表面，从而实现对此类基材的优化，并能够以较低的成本将其集成到标准微流体设备中。这项研究系统地设计和优化了超疏水表面和微流控设计，以最大限度地利用表面增强来实现关键的微流控诊断功能。这项研究的目标是为特定的微流体应用创造可大规模制造的、可配置的超疏水表面，以便通过在微米和纳米尺度上探索物理原理，将其集成到商业微流体设备中。其他目标包括突破我们对微流体物理学的理解的当前极限，取得有形的成果：即，由于集成的超疏水表面，大规模生产的诊断设备的性能显著提高。

By leveraging the unique physics of flow on non-wetting superhydrophobic surfaces, this research seeks to overcome the persistent bottlenecks associated with manipulating fluids at extremely small volumes (microfluidics). While microfluidics holds much promise for early and deployable disease diagnostics, practical challenges associated with such precision manipulations have heretofore hindered its widespread dissemination. Microfluidics on superhydrophobic surfaces can solve many disease diagnostic problems by enabling: loss-less sample manipulations, novel hydrodynamic properties, extremely fast and controlled flows, and enhanced mixing. The knowledge and insight generated through this research will significantly improve and propel the field of microfluidics forward by elucidating the fundamental mechanisms of enhanced flow through engineered surface effects. It will also enable practical implementation and deployment of these mechanisms for real-world impact. Broader impacts of the work include the potential for mass manufacture superhydrophobic surfaces in commodity plastics and integration of them into microfluidic devices already in use. Additional impacts include K-12 science and engineering outreach programs, one entitled "A Hundred Tiny Hands" developed for children (ages 5 and up) where they can design and make their own superhydrophobic building blocks as part of our 'Inventor's Toolboxes' while learning modern science and engineering concepts with our accompanying comic books. This research involves the creation and implementation of superhydrophobic surfaces in commodity plastics on the large scale with standard roll to roll manufacturing, which allows the optimization of such substrates and enables the ability to inexpensively integrate them into standard microfluidics devices. This research systematically designs and optimizes both superhydrophobic surfaces and microfluidic designs to best leverage surface enhancements for key microfluidic-enabled diagnostic functionalities. Goals of the research are to create mass manufacturable configurable superhydrophobic surfaces tailored for specific microfluidic applications so they can be integrated into commercial microfluidic devices by probing the physics at the micro- and nano-scale. Other goals include pushing the current limits of our understanding of the physics of microfluidics, with an outcome that is physically tangible: i.e., mass manufactured diagnostic devices with significantly improved performance due to integrated superhydrophobic surfaces.