Congratulations to Tuo, Jingyuan, and Ethan!
Their work on pioneering template-based guided electrokinetic micro- and nano- assembly has been published in high impact ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces journal:
Zhou, J. Chen, E. Kropp, and L. Kulinsky, “Guided Electrokinetic Assembly of Polystyrene Microbeads onto Photopatterned Carbon Electrode Arrays,” ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, 121 [31], 35647 (2020).
Assembly of microdevices from constituent parts currently relies on slow serial steps via direct assembly processes such as pick-and-place operations. Template Electrokinetic Assembly (TEA), a guided, non-contact assembly process, is presented in this work as a promising alternative to serial assembly processes. To characterize the process and its implementation of electrokinetic dielectrophoretic and electroosmotic phenomena, studies were conducted to examine the assembly of polymer microparticles at specific locations on glassy carbon interdigitated electrode arrays (IDEAs). The IDEAs are coated with a layer of lithographically patterned resist, so that when an AC electric field is applied to the IDEA, microparticles suspended in the aqueous solution are attracted to the open regions of the electrodes not covered by photoresist. The interplay between AC electroosmosis and dielectrophoretic forces guides 1- micron and 5-micron diameter polystyrene beads to assemble in regions, or “wells,” uncovered by photoresist atop the electrodes. Permanent entrapment of the microparticles is then demonstrated via the electropolymerization process of the conducting polymer polypyrrole.
