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特性，本研究试图克服在极小体积（微流体）下操纵流体的持续瓶颈。虽然微流体技术对早期和可部署的疾病诊断有很大的希望，但与这种精确操作相关的实际挑战迄今为止阻碍了其广泛传播。超疏水表面上的微流体可以解决许多疾病诊断问题，它可以实现：无损样品操作、新颖的流体动力学特性、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见解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善和推动微流体领域向前发展。它还将使这些机制的实际实施和部署能够产生实际影响。这项工作的更广泛的影响包括在商品塑料中大规模制造超疏水表面的潜力，以及将它们集成到已经使用的微流体装置中。其他影响包括K-12科学和工程推广计划，其中一个名为“一百只小手”的儿童（5岁及以上），他们可以设计和制作自己的超疏水积木，作为我们的“发明家工具箱”的一部分，同时学习我们随附的漫画书的现代科学和工程概念。这项研究涉及在商品塑料中大规模使用标准卷对卷制造的超疏水表面的创建和实施，这允许对此类基板进行优化，并使其能够以低成本将其集成到标准微流体设备中。本研究系统地设计和优化了超疏水表面和微流控设计，以最好地利用表面增强的关键微流控诊断功能。该研究的目标是为特定的微流体应用量身定制可大规模制造的可配置超疏水表面，以便通过探索微纳米尺度的物理特性将其集成到商业微流体设备中。其他目标包括推动我们对微流体物理学的理解的当前极限，其结果是物理上有形的：即，由于集成的超疏水表面，大量生产的诊断设备的性能显着提高。

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.