• Optofluidics
• Energy
• Nanofluidics for Biomolecular Analysis
• Self-reliant Microfluidic and Biorobotic Systems
• Reconfigurable and Programmable Matter

Optofluidics

Optical devices which incorporate liquids as a fundamental part of the structure can be traced as far back as the 18th century where rotating pools of mercury were put forth as a simple technique to create smooth mirrors for use in reflecting telescopes.

Modern micro- and nanofluidics has enabled the development of a present day equivalent of such devices centered on the marriage of fluidics and optics which we refer to as Optofluidics. We have a number of ongoing efforts in this area including: reconfigurable photonic materials, photonically enabled biological identification, thermo-optically enabled programmable matter, and developing new ways for assembling nanomaterials and investigating single biomolecules using photonic forces.

Our research in this area is supported by a number of agencies including the National Science Foundation through our NIRT Grant on Active Nanophotofluidic Systems (visit the NIRT website), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Energy

Nanotechnology holds great promise to impact the production, storage and conservation of energy. Our research in this area focuses on two areas: the directed assembly of hybrid nanostructures which cannot be manufactured by other means (e.g. self assembly or chemical synthesis) and the use of novel photonic elements in direct biofuel and biomass production. With regards to the former of these, we envision development of optical nanofactories that mass produce new types of materials with extremely high photo-electric or photo-thermal energy conversion properties. Our hope is to develop a system where any nanostructure which can be dreamed up can be assembled. In biofuel production we are using our optofluidic techniques to optimize light delivery into bioreactors.

Our research in this area is supported by the Department of Energy and the Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future.

Nanofluidic Devices for Biomolecular Analysis

Interest in the development of new biosensing technologies has been largely driven by advancements in proteomics and genomics that led to an increase in the number of biomarkers associated with specific disease and injury states, and pharmacological responses. Systems which can diagnose and detect these biomarkers at very low levels and with low false alarm rates could enable early stage diagnosis before the patient becomes symptomatic. When deployed in low resource areas or used for large scale population screening applications, low cost and rapidity of results become equally important.

Towards this end we are developing a series of sensor platforms which fuse our background in nanofluidics, nanophotonics and biomolecular analysis. Broadly speaking our interests are in developing systems which are simultaneously:

1. Sufficiently sensitive and specific to detect biomarkers at pre-symptomatic levels with very low false alarm rates.
2. Capable of functioning in liquid (raw sera) environments.
3. Provide both target and sample multiplexing capability.
4. Reduce the amount of time required for analysis.
5. Minimize the number of power consuming components in the system and reliance on external infrastructure. This includes reducing or eliminating a number of the traditional sample processing steps.

Depending on the particular application, the solution may be a simple, cheap polymer device or a highly integrated platform which is sufficiently light, low power and autonomous that it can both take and screen a sera sample against the presence of a series of infectious agents at regular intervals. We are pursuing elements of both.

Our research in this area is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Cornell Nanobiotechnology Center.

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Self-Reliant Microfluidic and Biorobotic Systems

Autonomous microsystems can be defined as an “individual functioning of its own accord with the ability to interpret and intelligently interact with its environment, whose fundamental physical dimension is on the order of a millimeter or smaller”. In nature autonomous microsystems, in the form of small insect species, have found an ecological niche that is unparalleled. In the last few years the convergence of a number of advancements in MicroElectroMechanical Systems or MEMS technology (including power generation, energy storage, communications, sensing, microfluidics and subcomponent assembly) has opened the door to creating artificial autonomous and “self-reliant” microsystems.

In our group we are working on the development of a number of different autonomous and self-reliant microsystems. One example of our work in this area includes the development of “Insect Cyborg Sentinels” which use embedded drug delivery and electrical elements to control the flight of living insects. We are also developing implantable, glucose powered, microfluidic devices that continuously monitor the bloodstream for the presence of biomarkers indicative of a traumatic injury and, when detected, provide a life extending treatment for it.

Our research in this area is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Office of Naval Research.

Reconfigurable and Programmable Matter

Reconfigurable systems are those in which some or all of a system’s physical, chemical or electrical properties can be changed either on-command to enhance functionality or in response to a change in external/internal conditions. An example of such a system in the field of electronics is the Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). Put simply, these systems can be reprogrammed by the user at any time post-fabrication to perform any arbitrary set of logical functions. Such devices have a number of benefits including: Cost, Adaptability, Robustness, and Security. Despite the advantages demonstrated in electronics, in few other fields of chip-based technology have equivalently ubiquitous reconfigurability techniques been developed.

Our work in this area is focused on two areas: the development of fluidically reconfigurable photonics and ”programmable matter”. In the former of these we use traditional microfluidic transport techniques to shuttle around light instead of chemical species on a chip. We use these new techniques to create continuously adaptive optical elements which can be used to re-write optical circuits. Our work in programmable matter takes this idea a step further: instead of reconfiguring the elements of matter, we attempt to reconfigure the matter itself. Our approach to directed self-assembly could form the basis of a new microfabrication paradigm in which programmable, reconfigurable structures are assembled from simple, mass-producible units. This platform could be the basis for many other microsystems from integrated MEMS devices to lab-on-chip bioanalysis devices. Our assembly and disassembly methods are exploit both fluid dynamic and optical techniques.

Our research in this area is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Science Foundation.