Biomimetic Membrane Simulation for Water Desalination

Reverse Osmosis (RO) for the desalination of saline water is associated with tremendous energy costs and low efficiency. Improvements in nanotechnology have led to the development of a variety of nanoporous membranes for water purification. Biomimetic membrane is an emerging new technology for water purification. Consequently, there is still much to study about the function and structure of these kinds of membranes. The purpose of this work was to determine which factors influence membrane performance. The focus was on those factors affecting membranes in pure water. Biomimetic membrane using MoS2 which has a higher rate of ion rejection and higher water permeability was studied through molecular dynamics simulations using reactive force fields (ReaxFF). The behaviour of the membrane before subjecting it to desalination was studied. The effect of water temperature, atmospheric pressure and membrane thickness on performance of membrane was studied. The permeability flux was calculated and compared in different conditions and the relation between these factors was revealed.

Preliminary Exploration of Cell-Based SAW Detection for Water Toxicity

Nowadays, many surface sensing mechanisms exist, not all of them can be applied in water-based environment. Most of surface sensing techniques were developed in air-based environment. In order to obtain a potential cell-based biosensor, the sensing method needs to be reliable and repeatable in liquid environment. Therefore, we adapt existing air-based surface acoustic sensor and promote the technology into water-based applications. The goal of this study is to apply surface acoustic waves (SAW) for water-based environment sensing. We will use shear horizontal wave (SH wave) as surface sensing mechanism. SH wave is a type of surface acoustic waves (SAW) which can be used for weight/mass sensing in the air environment. Interdigitated transducers (IDTs) induce the deformation of an ST-cut quartz crystal substrate in AC source and generate waves. With a thin layer of polymer like Parylene and polyimide, the SH wave will be confined between the interface of substrate and polymer layer without suffering the energy loss due to the liquid damping from above. The fundamental frequency of the SAW device is defined by the spacing between the electrodes of IDT. The frequency of interests for this research is below 100 MHz in water-based environment. Due to the stable frequency characteristics of ST-cut quartz in room temperature, this SAW device can be a good candidate for field applications. From an early IDTs design, investigation in material and IDTs configuration is necessary to improve signal quality in order to qualify for liquid phase cell-based bio-sensing applications. A simplified 3D unit cell FEM model is created to study the thickness effects of wave-guide and electrodes. Boundary conditions and assumptions are discussed in the modeling. The simulated eigenfrequency of SH mode is close to the theoretical fundamental frequency of the 64μm wavelength IDTs. The mass damping effects from gold electrodes is more significant than aluminum electrodes.

Viscoelectric Effect on the Electroosmotic Flow in Nanochannels With Heterogeneous Zeta Potentials

In the present work, we realize a study about the influence of viscoelectric effect on the electroosmotic flow of Newtonian fluids in nanochannels formed by two parallel flat plates. In the problem, the channel walls have heterogeneous zeta potentials which follow a sinusoidal distribution; moreover, viscoelectric effects appear into the electric double layers when high zeta potentials are considered at the channel walls, modifying the fluid viscosity and the fluid velocity. To find the solution of flow field, the modified Poisson-Boltzmann, mass conservation and momentum governing equations, are solved numerically. In the results, combined effects from the zeta potential heterogeneities and viscosity changes yields different kind of flow recirculations controlled by the dephasing angle, amplitude and number of waves of the heterogeneities at the walls. The viscoelectric effect produces a decrease in the magnitude of velocity profiles and volumetric flow rate when the high zeta potentials are magnified. Additionally, the heterogeneous zeta potentials at the walls generate an induced pressure on the flow. This investigation extend the knowledge of electroosmotic flows under field effects for future mixing applications.

Area-Arrayed Graphene Nano-Ribbon-Base Strain Sensor

Health monitoring devices using a strain sensor, which shows high sensitivity and large deformability, are strongly demanded due to further aging of society with fewer children. Conventional strain sensors, such as metallic strain gauges and semiconductive strain sensors, however, aren’t applicable to health monitoring because of their low sensitivity and deformability. In this study, fundamental design of area-arrayed graphene nano-ribbon (GNR) strain senor was proposed in order to fabricate next-generation strain sensor. The sensor was consisted of two sections, which are stress concentration section and stress detecting section. This structure can take full advantage of GNR’s properties. Moreover, high quality GNR fabrication process, which is one of the important process in the sensor, was developed by applying CVD (Chemical Vapor Deposition) method. Top-down approach was applied to fabricate the GNR. At first, in order to synthesize a high-quality graphene sheet, acetylene-based LPCVD (low pressure chemical vapor deposition) using a closed Cu foil was employed. After that, graphene was transferred silicon substrate and the quality was evaluated. The high quality graphene was transferred on the soft PDMS substrate and metallic electrodes were fabricated by applying MEMS technology. Area-arrayed fine pin structure was fabricated by using hard PDMS as a stress-concentration section. Finally, both sections were integrated to form a highly sensitive and large deformable pressure sensor. The strain sensitivity of the GNR-base sensor was also evaluated.

Methods of Mass-Flow Characterization of Water-Glycol Mixtures Through Micro/Nano-Channels

The design of a novel micro-propulsion system for small satellites of the nano-satellites class (1–10kg) that is low-cost, non-toxic, non-flammable, and no-pressurized at launch conditions is currently being developed at the University of Arkansas. The goal of the present micro-propulsion system is to achieve milli-Newton thrust levels with specific impulses on the order of 100s. The proposed propellant is the water-propylene glycol. However, little data is available for its fluid and thermal characteristics at the gaseous state, nor the evolution of similar mixtures through micro/nano-channels. This paper will present experimental methods of measuring the mass flow rate of the water-glycol mixtures through micro/nano-channels. A MEMS fluidic chamber fabricated with a nano-channel is used to quantify the mass flow through optical tracking of liquid interfaces confined in the chamber. The dimensions of the channels are designed with the purpose to act as a passive throttling valve that prevent liquid-phase fluids from entering into the nozzle in order to achieve a simple water-based cold-gas propulsion system.

Simulation of Fluid Flow in a Microchannel at Low Reynolds Number Using Dissipative Particle Dynamics

In this paper, a two-dimensional Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) technique to simulate the poiseuille flow in a microchannel is developed using an in-house code. The calculated Reynolds number is reduced via adjusting the DPD parameters. The obtained velocity profile is compared with the analytical results and a good agreement is found. The drag force and the drag coefficient on a stationary cylinder exerted by the fluid particles are obtained using the developed DPD code. The calculated drag coefficient exhibits a close match with already published data in the literature.

Capillary Force Driven Single-Cell Spiking Apparatus for Studying Circulating Tumor Cells

The characterization of single cells within heterogeneous populations has great impact on both biomedical sciences and cancer research. By investigating cellular compositions on a broad scale, pertinent outliers may be lost in the sample set. Alternatively, an investigation focused on the behavior of specific cells, such as circulating tumor cells (CTCs), will reveal genetic biomarkers or phenotypic characteristics associated with cancer and metastasis. On average, CTC concentration in peripheral blood is extremely low, as few as one to two per billion of healthy blood cells. Consequently, the critical element lacking in many methods of CTC detection is accurate cell capture efficiency at low concentrations. To simulate CTC isolation, researchers usually spike small amounts of tumor cells to healthy blood for separation. However, spiking tumor cells at extremely low concentrations is challenging in a standard laboratory setting. We report our study on an innovative apparatus and method designed for low-cost, precise, and replicable single-cell spiking (SCS). Our SCS method operates solely from capillary aspiration without the reliance on external laboratory equipment. To ensure that our method does not affect the viability of each cell, we investigated the effects of surface membrane tensions induced by aspiration. Finally, we performed affinity-based CTC isolation using human acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells (CCRF-CEM) spiked into healthy whole blood with the SCS technique. The results of the isolation experiments demonstrate the reliability of our method in generating low-concentration cell samples.

Improving the Micropump Velocity for Orthogonal Electrode Pattern

The current research work in this paper involves optimizing an orthogonal electrode multifunctional system to transport biofluid. Orthogonal electrode patterned microfluidic device is known to produce high microflow velocity when excited by AC signals. This paper specifically investigates the fluid flow criterion by determining the direction and velocity in the selected electrode pattern actuated with AC signals. During the initial process, experiments were conducted at 100μm spacing between the orthogonal electrodes. The exact setup was placed on a hydrophobic surface to observe the change in the velocity. This process was then repeated with 150μm spacing. Fluid with conductivity 2.36 mS/cm was tested at voltage levels ranging between 5V to 10V at 50 KHz to 1MHZ frequency levels with an increment of 100 KHz. The goal of this research work is to increase microflow velocities by varying the electrode separation distance, flow surface, voltage and frequency. Trivial investigation also done on the possibility of micromixing using this pattern.

Photosensitivity of Monolayer Graphene-Base Field Effect Transistor

The optical properties and device physics of monolayer graphene under light is investigated in this study. In order to understand the change of the electronic behavior of graphene under light, it was necessary to study from the most fundamental layer with high quality. Thus, it became mandatory to develop a highly efficient, low-cost fabrication process for synthesis of high-quality monolayer graphene. The high-quality monolayer graphene was grown on a copper foil using a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LP-CVD) method at temperature of 1035°C for 10 minutes. Acetylene was used as the precursor gas for the synthesis of monolayer graphene. Thin Pt/Au films were, then, deposited on a silicon dioxide/silicon (SiO2/Si) substrate using electron beam (EB) lithography which served as source and drain electrodes of a transistor. The synthesized graphene was, then, transferred to a SiO2/Si substrate using PMMA (polymethyl methacrylate)-assisted method. The quality of the synthesized graphene was validated using Raman spectroscopy. No significant D peak was observed in the Raman spectra of the synthesized graphene. This result validated the high quality of the transferred graphene. Next, the photo-sensitivity of G-FET was investigated under light source of color temperature of 2856 K at room temperature. The electron transfer characteristic of the fabricated G-FET was measured under dark and light illumination conditions. Finally, the graphene-based field effect transistor G-FET demonstrated an external photo responsivity of about 200 μA/W with a maximum photocurrent attained to be 0.2 μA at an incident luminance power of 1 mW. The active detection region of this sample was 1000 × 60 μm2.

A Scalabale Microfluidic Device for Switching of Microparticles Using Dielectrophoresis

In this paper, we have introduced a negative Dielectrophoresis based microfluidic system using a novel arrangement of microelectrodes to perform switching of micro objects. Both the experimental and numerical results are presented. Two sets of interdigitated electrodes, extending slightly into the microchannel from each sidewall, are embedded on the bottom of the microchannel. A finite element model in COMSOL Multiphysics 5.2a was developed to demonstrate switching of Red Blood Cells in the microchannel followed by multiple parametric studies to study the effect of several parameters on cell trajectories and optimize the design parameters. To verify numerical results, a PDMS-based microfluidic device on glass wafer was fabricated. The switching of Red Blood Cells in the microfluidic device with a single inlet and three outlets was also demonstrated.