Study of transitions between wetting states on microcavity arrays by optical transmission microscopy.

In this article, we present a simple and fast optical method based on transmission microscopy to study the stochastic wetting transitions on micro- and nanostructured polymer surfaces immersed in water. We analyze the influence of immersion time and the liquid pressure on the degree of water intrusion in individual microcavities on these surfaces as well as the lifespan of their superhydrophobicity. We show that transitions among the three wetting states (Cassie, Cassie-impregnating, and Wenzel) occur with a certain pressure threshold (300 mbar for a microcavity diameter of 7.

Structure irregularity impedes drop roll-off at superhydrophobic surfaces.

We study water drop roll-off at superhydrophobic surfaces with different surface patterns. Superhydrophobic microcavity surfaces were fabricated in silicon and coated with 1H,1H,2H,2H-perfluorodecyltrichlorosilane (FDTS). For the more irregular surface patterns, the observed increase in roll-off angles is found to be caused by a decrease of the receding contact angle, which in turn is caused by an increase of the triple phase contact line of the drops for those more irregular surfaces.

All polymer chip for amperometric studies of transmitter release from large groups of neuronal cells.

We present an all polymer electrochemical chip for simple detection of transmitter release from large groups of cultured PC 12 cells. Conductive polymer PEDOT:tosylate microelectrodes were used together with constant potential amperometry to obtain easy-to-analyze oxidation signals from potassium-induced release of transmitter molecules. The nature of the resulting current peaks is discussed, and the time for restoring transmitter reservoirs is studied.

Amperometric noise at thin film band electrodes.

Background current noise is often a significant limitation when using constant-potential amperometry for biosensor application such as amperometric recordings of transmitter release from single cells through exocytosis. In this paper, we fabricated thin-film electrodes of gold and conductive polymers and measured the current noise in physiological buffer solution for a wide range of different electrode areas. The noise measurements could be modeled by an analytical expression, representing the electrochemical cell as a resistor and capacitor in series.

Characterization of poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):tosylate conductive polymer microelectrodes for transmitter detection.

In this paper we investigate the physical and electrochemical properties of micropatterned poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene):tosylate (PEDOT:tosylate) microelectrodes for neurochemical detection. PEDOT:tosylate is a promising conductive polymer electrode material for chip-based bioanalytical applications such as capillary electrophoresis, high-performance liquid chromatography, and constant potential amperometry at living cells. Band electrodes with widths down to 3 μm were fabricated on polymer substrates using UV lithographic methods.

A Cassie-like law using triple phase boundary line fractions for faceted droplets on chemically heterogeneous surfaces.

We present experimental contact angle data for surfaces, which were surface-engineered with a hydrophobic micropattern of hexagonal geometry. The chemically heterogeneous surface of the same hexagonal pattern of defects resulted in faceted droplets of hexagonal shape. When measuring the advancing contact angles with a viewing position aligned parallel to rows of defects, we found that an area averaged Cassie-law failed in describing the data.