Slashdot Mirror
Digital Microfluidics
herrd0kt0r writes "A brilliant team of researches at Duke University have been working on digital microfluidics, with potential applications in biotech labs-on-a-chip, optical routers/switches, wavelength division multiplexers and the like. Essentially, this team has developed a solid state device capable of moving very small drops of fluid over very small distances with very little power. From their website they remark that "[m]icrofluidic processing is performed on unit-sized packets of fluid which are transported, stored, mixed, reacted, or analyzed in a discrete manner using a standard set of basic instructions."
Their site includes eight .mpgs demonstrating their microfluidics tech in real-time. Be sure to take a gander at this video showing programmable flow of droplets as well as this one showing droplet splitting and formation."
Interesting concept, but what uses?
Vodka Martini.... microprocessed, not stirred.
This is not a signature.
Sure, direct links to .mpg files on slashdot, what the heck were they thinking?
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
[m]icrofluidic processing? I was going to enroll in the "vapoware 101" class that Duke was offering but for some reason the web site is down.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Thus a wide range of established chemistries and protocols can be seamlessly transferred to a nanoliter droplet format.
/. effect..
Can it be used for TCP/IP? If so I would like to electrowet those mpegs to my computer. Stupid
,
faeryman
You guys are hammering the duke site and I was trying to mirror their stuff for a project I am working on. Very neat stuff, hope to have my mirror up soon.
Programmable flow
:) )
Droplet splitting and formation
HTH.
Oliver.
(I reserve the right to take them down if you kill my web server too
- Oliver
The right to bear arms is only slightly less stupid than the right to arm bears...
Eat your heart out!
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Does anyone else get an eerie Terminator feeling from those dancing droplets?
Oh, the irony.
im thinking, some blacklight reflective liquid, on the top of the case, moving around in different patterns. Or coat the top of the whole case with a mapped out electirc grid, and you make it so whatever shape you want it to draw (controlled by the computer) it does! it could look pretty bad ass if you did a good job...oh and you didn't move your case.
"an eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind"
I had a weird vision of things to come the other day...
I dreamt in the future, man will have developed his skills of genetic engineering and stem cell research to the point where he can make things that are only science fiction now..
For example, I started thinking about genetically engineered photovoltic algea. I saw big gigantic pools of green liquid converting sunlight to electricity using completely enviromentally friendly and biodegradeable algea.
I also thought about genetically engineered eyeballs that could do the same thing. Imagine 100 foot eyeballs looking up at the sky in the desert. Or genetically engineered eyeballs for space observation.
Just another one of those weird topics, on a weird day. Just to humor myself, does anyone know of any research being done into this field?
--toq
I can't figure out whether to call him a hypocrit or a moron....I guess either works...
Fluids that compute, eh? How far is it from here to mimetic polyalloys?
this whole shebang about microdroplet formation and movement is especially incredible when considering lab-on-a-chip applications for the biotech industry.
one of the biggest problems with current solutions is the difficulty in utilizing small samples of blood/fluid. the solid-state approach of this team is great in that there are, by definition, NO MOVING PARTS! nothin to break down, and nothin to shrink down either. so you can keep things puny. the fluid volume in these experiments are in the _nanoliter_ range. and they have demonstrated their ability to split and reform droplets.
so imagine this: you have a limited quantity of blood to analyze, and wanna run a bazillion tests. no sweat. with this tech, you can suck off puny portions at a time! you can move them around however you'd like as well, to whatever assays you'd like to run.
the team has also demonstrated excellent droplet mixing results as well. why is this important? well, with fluid volumes that small, it is difficult to mix solutions. their electrowetting approach has yielded results that show excellent mixing. this is good for labs-on-a-chip as well, as you may need to mix different things together for certain assays.
the potential for this kind of technology is pretty staggering. very small. very little power. no moving parts. use em for switches of many sorts! or hell, did you check out the video where they move the drop at over 200 hertz?!
HOLY SHIZNIT!
that's fast! eesh! but screw all this serious stuff. i think we can _all_ enjoy the first video showing the droplet performing humping maneuvers. aww jeah.
Sure, direct links to .mpg files on slashdot. What the heck were they thinking?
Lucky bastard.
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
I've mirrored the videos on KaZaA. Here's the names:
e tting.mpg
r otary_flow.mpg
/. channel on some P2P network for mirrored multmedia files.
dispenser_slow.mpg
droplet_200hz.mpg
electrow
form_rotate_3.mpg
form_rotate_5.mpg
side_moving.mpg
And I put 'Mike Pollack' in the author field.
There oughta be a
A while back Slashdot ran a story aout micro engines. If I recall correctly werent they having probles with fluid aka fuel flowing through those little suckers due to them being small etc etc dont have time to go back and read it work soon. Anyways maybe these two techs can be combied if they can make it small enough to run on the micro engines. My 2 cents.
This will just make fluids all the more important. And we know what happens when such things become put into law.
No lame attempts at humor please. :p
Actually funny stuff welcomed.
This puts us closer to handheld DNA analysis from a PDA. How soon till police in the field can check one's identity with a palm or pocketpc? (assuming you won't tell them).
Wait.....ya lost me.
Seems that in addition to being an investigational aid, it could eventually become useful for security. Or not (unless it was rigged to only take "live" samples checking for body temp, etc. -- bodily fluids aren't that hard to come by otherwise).
there was a comment above posted by anonymous coward that i'd thought i'd pass along. he just posted a full mirror of the site:
http://www.duke.edu/~pyp/microfluidics
apparently, you guys blew www.ee.duke.edu up.
I hope you're using the spyware-free KaZaa Lite rather than the infested KaZaa.
Wow. I remember reading about fluidic processing in the late 1960s. Must've gone from the "valve" stage to to the IC (Integrated Conduit ?) ;-) since then. Hey, check out this fluidic amplifier ... not very micro back then eh ?
Man that must really take persistence working on a tech bywater for 40 years waiting for it to come good. Mind you I think I remember even back then there being real world applications for this ... slow processing in hostile environments where electronics would get fried etc ... I think from memory it used the Coanda Effect or something for switching fluid streams. And there were adds in New Scientist for years afterwards selling DIY fluidics kits.
Well maybe at last its time has come ...
Bitter and proud of it.
Two obligatory points I have not seen yet... (maybe because they were modded down)...
1) Wonder what a beowulf cluster of those would work like (bad-dum dum[b])
2) Once this is mass-produced, overclockers could do amazing things, considering the likely heat-dissipating properties of such a product.
(Hey, I'm here to post, not to think!)