Fabrication of a picoliter microreactor with multilayer elastomer values

Microfluidics has the ability to greatly reduce the time needed to do many biological tests. The development of polymers has brought about substrates with elastomeric properties that can be used to the advantage of microfluidic device design. Elastomeric polymers can be used to create small scale passive valve systems. These valves can compartmentalize reactions in devices. Current microreactors only allow researchers to do one test at a time. Devices with the capability to compartmentalize reactions using valves could perform multiple reactions simultaneously. This thesis details the fabrication and design of a microreactor that can maintain cells in the device after a reaction. The fabrication of the device was done without a clean room and using no specialized equipment. Creation of the device and using it for testing requires little training and takes less time than performing the test using conventional methods. The device could readily be made and used by researchers using equipment already in their lab and is cheaper than current devices on the market.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2005

Author dc:creator

• Smith, Emily (Emily C.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Todd Thorsen.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/32916

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/32916