Towards the clinical translation of a silver sulfide nanoparticle contrast agent: large scale production with a highly parallelized microfluidic chip.

Purpose: Ultrasmall silver sulfide nanoparticles (AgS-NP) have been identified as promising contrast agents for a number of modalities and in particular for dual-energy mammography. These AgS-NP have demonstrated marked advantages over clinically available agents with the ability to generate higher contrast with high biocompatibility. However, current synthesis methods for inorganic nanoparticles are low-throughput and highly time-intensive, limiting the possibility of large animal studies or eventual clinical use of this potential imaging agent.

Towards the Clinical Translation of a Silver Sulfide Nanoparticle Contrast Agent: Large Scale Production with a Highly Parallelized Microfluidic Chip.

Ultrasmall silver sulfide nanoparticles (Ag S-NP) have been identified as promising contrast agents for a number of modalities and in particular for dual-energy mammography. These Ag S-NP have demonstrated marked advantages over clinically available agents with the ability to generate higher contrast with high biocompatibility. However, current synthesis methods are low-throughput and highly time-intensive, limiting the possibility of large animal studies or eventual clinical use of this potential imaging agent.

Scaling up the throughput of microfluidic droplet-based materials synthesis: A review of recent progress and outlook.

The last two decades have witnessed tremendous progress in the development of microfluidic chips that generate micrometer- and nanometer-scale materials. These chips allow precise control over composition, structure, and particle uniformity not achievable using conventional methods. These microfluidic-generated materials have demonstrated enormous potential for applications in medicine, agriculture, food processing, acoustic, and optical meta-materials, and more.

Scalable mRNA and siRNA Lipid Nanoparticle Production Using a Parallelized Microfluidic Device.

A major challenge to advance lipid nanoparticles (LNPs) for RNA therapeutics is the development of formulations that can be produced reliably across the various scales of drug development. Microfluidics can generate LNPs with precisely defined properties, but have been limited by challenges in scaling throughput. To address this challenge, we present a scalable, parallelized microfluidic device (PMD) that incorporates an array of 128 mixing channels that operate simultaneously.

Robust Microfabrication of Highly Parallelized Three-Dimensional Microfluidics on Silicon.

We present a new, robust three dimensional microfabrication method for highly parallel microfluidics, to improve the throughput of on-chip material synthesis by allowing parallel and simultaneous operation of many replicate devices on a single chip. Recently, parallelized microfluidic chips fabricated in Silicon and glass have been developed to increase the throughput of microfluidic materials synthesis to an industrially relevant scale. These parallelized microfluidic chips require large arrays (>10,000) of Through Silicon Vias (TSVs) to deliver fluid from delivery channels to the parallelized devices.

Large-scale production of compound bubbles using parallelized microfluidics for efficient extraction of metal ions.

Correction for 'Large-scale production of compound bubbles using parallelized microfluidics for efficient extraction of metal ions' by Heon-Ho Jeong et al., Lab Chip, 2019, 19, 665-673.

Large-scale production of compound bubbles using parallelized microfluidics for efficient extraction of metal ions.

Recent advances in microfluidic technologies have enabled production of micro-scale compound bubbles that consist of gaseous cores surrounded by thin liquid shells, achieving control and uniformity not possible using conventional techniques. These compound bubbles have demonstrated enormous utility as functional materials for drug delivery, as ultra-lightweight structural materials, as engineered acoustic materials, and also as separating agents for extraction of metal ions from waste fluid streams. Despite these successful demonstrations, compound bubbles have largely remained at the laboratory-scale due to the slow production rates endemic to microfluidics (<10 mL h-1).

Silicon and glass very large scale microfluidic droplet integration for terascale generation of polymer microparticles.

Microfluidic chips can generate emulsions, which can be used to synthesize polymer microparticles that have superior pharmacological performance compared to particles prepared by conventional techniques. However, low production rates of microfluidics remains a challenge to successfully translate laboratory discoveries to commercial manufacturing. We present a silicon and glass device that incorporates an array of 10,260 (285 × 36) microfluidic droplet generators that uses only a single set of inlets and outlets, increasing throughput by >10,000× compared to microfluidics with a single generator.

Microfluidic diafiltration-on-chip using an integrated magnetic peristaltic micropump.

Diafiltration is a membrane filtration technique that rapidly removes permeable molecules from a solution by controlling the tangential and orthogonal flows over a membrane and by replenishing the permeate with an equivalent amount of replacement buffer. However, its application to the purification of many key biomaterials and nanomaterials has been limited by the large dead volume (>10 mL) that is required to automate the process. To address this challenge, we have developed a diafiltration-on-a-chip device that can process low-volume samples (50 μL).

Liter-scale production of uniform gas bubbles via parallelization of flow-focusing generators.

Microscale gas bubbles have demonstrated enormous utility as versatile templates for the synthesis of functional materials in medicine, ultra-lightweight materials and acoustic metamaterials. In many of these applications, high uniformity of the size of the gas bubbles is critical to achieve the desired properties and functionality. While microfluidics have been used with success to create gas bubbles that have a uniformity not achievable using conventional methods, the inherently low volumetric flow rate of microfluidics has limited its use in most applications.

Ultra-high throughput detection (1 million droplets per second) of fluorescent droplets using a cell phone camera and time domain encoded optofluidics.

Droplet-based assays-in which ultra-sensitive molecular measurements are made by performing millions of parallel experiments in picoliter droplets-have generated enormous enthusiasm due to their single molecule resolution and robustness to reaction conditions. These assays have great untapped potential for point of care diagnostics but are currently confined to laboratory settings due to the instrumentation necessary to serially generate, control, and measure tens of millions of droplets. To address this challenge, we have developed the microdroplet megascale detector (μMD) that can generate and detect the fluorescence of millions of droplets per second (1000× faster than conventional approaches) using only a conventional cell phone camera.

Kilo-scale droplet generation in three-dimensional monolithic elastomer device (3D MED).

Droplet-based microfluidics has led to transformational new approaches in diverse areas including materials synthesis and high-throughput biological assays. However, the translation of droplet microfluidics technology into commercial applications requires scale-up of droplet generation from the laboratory (<10 mL h(-1)) to the industrial (>1 L h(-1)) scale. To address this challenge, we develop a three-dimensional monolithic elastomer device (3D MED) for mass production of monodisperse emulsion droplets.

Ferroplasmons: intense localized surface plasmons in metal-ferromagnetic nanoparticles.

Interaction of photons with matter at length scales far below their wavelengths has given rise to many novel phenomena, including localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). However, LSPR with narrow bandwidth (BW) is observed only in a select few noble metals, and ferromagnets are not among them. Here, we report the discovery of LSPR in ferromagnetic Co and CoFe alloy (8% Fe) in contact with Ag in the form of bimetallic nanoparticles prepared by pulsed laser dewetting.

Self-organization of nanoscale multilayer liquid metal films: experiment and theory.

Surfaces made from composite nanostructured materials are potential multifunctional platforms for detection, sensing, and energy harvesting in biological and inorganic systems. However, robust and cost-effective synthesis routes are required to create the required arrays of nanostructures with tailorable size, morphology, and composition. Here we show that self-organization via spontaneous pattern formation in nanometer thick bilayer liquid films could lead to such nanostructure arrays.