THESIS
2021
1 online resource (xii, 55 pages) : illustrations (some color)
Abstract
Digital microfluidics (DMF) is an emerging fluid-handling technology popular in
chemical, biological, and biomedical applications due to its portability, automation, small
reagent consumption, short analysis time, parallelization of different processes, and flexible
device geometry. In this thesis, polydopamine (PDA) nanoparticles (NPs) synthesis was
optimized on the DMF platform by adjusting the incubation time, reagent concentration, and
molar ratio. The synthesis of monodispersed PDA NPs with a narrow size distribution was
confirmed with SEM images.
In addition, a new sandwich-structured PDA-silver hybrid material was designed and
produced with a layer-by-layer assembly process named as PDA-Ag-PDA, where silver
nanoparticles were wrapped between two layers of PDA, and the film was su...[
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Digital microfluidics (DMF) is an emerging fluid-handling technology popular in
chemical, biological, and biomedical applications due to its portability, automation, small
reagent consumption, short analysis time, parallelization of different processes, and flexible
device geometry. In this thesis, polydopamine (PDA) nanoparticles (NPs) synthesis was
optimized on the DMF platform by adjusting the incubation time, reagent concentration, and
molar ratio. The synthesis of monodispersed PDA NPs with a narrow size distribution was
confirmed with SEM images.
In addition, a new sandwich-structured PDA-silver hybrid material was designed and
produced with a layer-by-layer assembly process named as PDA-Ag-PDA, where silver
nanoparticles were wrapped between two layers of PDA, and the film was subsequently
integrated with DMF. Each layer of PDA-Ag-PDA coating was analysed with 3D surface
metrology, contact angle meter, and SEM-EDS, and AFM to measure their roughness values,
water contact angle, element distribution, respectively. Silver is a common Surface Enhanced
Raman Spectroscopy (SERS) material, and the enhancement factor of PDA-Ag-PDA was
estimated to be 1.9 × 10
4 using Rhodamine 6G as a probe molecule. The antibacterial property
assays were performed on DMF by real-time monitoring the oxygen consumption during E.
coli growth; the microfluidic approach consumed a smaller volume of reagent, required a shorter analysis time (maximum 10 hours), and allowed parallel operations to be performed. The PDA-Ag-PDA film with low cytotoxicity and strong antimicrobial effect was successfully
developed and integrated with DMF, which can be an alternative platform for conducting
biological applications on DMF in the future, in particular, for the adhesive protein and cells
analysis.
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