Microfluidics for Lab on a Chip Technology
Related Projects
Exosome Separation
Exosomes are a type of extracellular vesicles that are secreted by cells and could be found in all of the human biofluids including blood. The size of exosomes is in the range of 30-150 nm. And they have a spherical structure with a phospholipid membrane. Exosomes are very important in academic research for the purpose of diagnostic and therapeutic practices because of their protein and nucleic acid contents.
In this study, a technological system was developed for the isolation of circulating exosomes of human whole blood. This system consisted of a collection of microfluidic chips and protocols in order to extract a purified sample of exosomes from whole blood. The basic principle used for this purpose was size filtration using two types of filters with different pore sizes. This method of exosome isolation (size filtration) has the advantage of being relatively cheap and easily implementable in comparison with its counterpart methods. In order to evaluate the functioning of this system, the final samples extracted were examined with the help of DLS, SDS-PAGE and Western blot tests. Primary results indicated that the system is capable of eliminating excessive proteins in the exosome sample and preserving exosomes in the sample through the process of filtration. Regarding low expenses in making the chips and the simplicity of working with the proposed protocols, this system has the potentiality of being exploited instead of commonly used exosome isolation methods including ultracentrifugation and size exclusion chromatography which are known as being expensive and complicated.
Droplet Manipulation
Silica materials have been extensively investigated because of their applications in a wide variety of areas, such as large molecule catalysis, biomolecule separations, and development of sensors and devices. Recently, there has been a great attention to the synthesis of anisotropic silica particles. These silica particles will inspire new research in the fields where their mesoporosity and shape may have a strong impact on their performance, such as in nanomedicine or controlled release The microfluidic technique provides a straightforward and robust approach to the formation of highly monodisperse emulsion droplets. Due to its incomparable control over size, microfluidic emulsion droplets have been demonstrated as morphological templates for the synthesis of monodisperse silica or silica core/shell microspheres. So Microfluidics has emerged as a promising platform for nanomaterial synthesis, providing precise control over particle size, shape, porosity, and structure compared to conventional batch synthesis approaches.
In this study, we report a one-step in situ method that combines a microfluidic emulsification technique and a rapid solvent diffusion induced self-assembly technique inside microfluidic to generate highly ordered mesoporous microspheres. Uniform droplets of a precursor solution are generated in the soft microfluidic devices upstream and are subsequently allowed into the silica microspheres downstream by rapid solvent diffusion induced self-assembly in the microfluidic channels.
Uniform silica sol emulsion droplets in an organic phase, dimethyl carbonate (DMC) and Silica sol was achieved by mixing tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and triethyl amine with water.
Our method, microfluidic DISA, makes it possible to control the particle sizes in the scale of micrometers and also to manipulate particle properties by changing synthesis parameters, such as the design of the microfluidic channels, the flow rate of the precursor solution and oil.