Microfluidic flow in printed fracture channel

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In the final stages of the project, ending 2021, I began a collaboration with a Genetics research group to help develop the Organized Microfibrillation process for microfluidics. Up until this point I had difficulty getting water based solutions into the porous OM polymer films. Minor success was achieved with common additives and surfactants. With this new collaboration we were successfully able to identify some chemicals that enabled the flow of water based solutions in my OM channels. With this breakthrough, we were able to achieve other milestones with the OM films. Relevant biological materials, such as proteins and saccharides could enter the channels and could be tracked by fluorescent microscope. Finally we were able to achieve separation of biological materials with differing molecular weights, including separation of proteins and saccharaides, and separation of insulin and inert SARS-COV2 capsid. Separation was achieved by making OM channels with differing porosity such that larger molecules were blocked by the pores. These achievements have been included in a paper that was submitted to Nature Communications.With the same collaborators I also worked on how to move liquids through OM films without capillary action. A weakness of OM for microfluidics is the lack of pumping capability. During this time I tried applying electrophoresis to my OM films. I and my collaborators explored different experimental setups and conditions and were able to achieve electrophoretic flow preliminary experiments.