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Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application

High aspect-ratio elastomeric micropillars play important roles as the platform for microscale sensing and actuation. Many soft-lithographic techniques have been developed for their facile realization but most of the techniques are limited to build the micropillars only on totally flat, widely acces...

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Autores principales: Li, Qiang, Dhakal, Rabin, Kim, Jaeyoun
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5717269/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29209022
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17230-3
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author Li, Qiang
Dhakal, Rabin
Kim, Jaeyoun
author_facet Li, Qiang
Dhakal, Rabin
Kim, Jaeyoun
author_sort Li, Qiang
collection PubMed
description High aspect-ratio elastomeric micropillars play important roles as the platform for microscale sensing and actuation. Many soft-lithographic techniques have been developed for their facile realization but most of the techniques are limited to build the micropillars only on totally flat, widely accessible substrate areas with the micropillar’s structural characteristics completely predetermined, leaving little room for in situ control. Here we demonstrate a new technique which overcomes these limitations by directly drawing micropillars from pipette-dispensed PDMS microdroplets using vacuum-chucked microspheres. The combined utilization of PDMS microdroplets and microspheres not only enables the realization of microsphere-tipped PDMS micropillars on non-flat, highly space-constrained substrate areas at in situ controllable heights but also allows arraying of micropillars with dissimilar heights at a close proximity. To validate the new technique’s utility and versatility, we realize PDMS micropillars on various unconventional substrate areas in various configurations. We also convert one of them, the optical fiber/micropillar hybrid, into a soft optical contact sensor. Both the fabrication technique and the resulting sensing scheme will be useful for future biomedical microsystems.
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spelling pubmed-57172692017-12-08 Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application Li, Qiang Dhakal, Rabin Kim, Jaeyoun Sci Rep Article High aspect-ratio elastomeric micropillars play important roles as the platform for microscale sensing and actuation. Many soft-lithographic techniques have been developed for their facile realization but most of the techniques are limited to build the micropillars only on totally flat, widely accessible substrate areas with the micropillar’s structural characteristics completely predetermined, leaving little room for in situ control. Here we demonstrate a new technique which overcomes these limitations by directly drawing micropillars from pipette-dispensed PDMS microdroplets using vacuum-chucked microspheres. The combined utilization of PDMS microdroplets and microspheres not only enables the realization of microsphere-tipped PDMS micropillars on non-flat, highly space-constrained substrate areas at in situ controllable heights but also allows arraying of micropillars with dissimilar heights at a close proximity. To validate the new technique’s utility and versatility, we realize PDMS micropillars on various unconventional substrate areas in various configurations. We also convert one of them, the optical fiber/micropillar hybrid, into a soft optical contact sensor. Both the fabrication technique and the resulting sensing scheme will be useful for future biomedical microsystems. Nature Publishing Group UK 2017-12-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5717269/ /pubmed/29209022 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17230-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Li, Qiang
Dhakal, Rabin
Kim, Jaeyoun
Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application
title Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application
title_full Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application
title_fullStr Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application
title_full_unstemmed Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application
title_short Microdroplet-based On-Demand Drawing of High Aspect-Ratio Elastomeric Micropillar and Its Contact Sensing Application
title_sort microdroplet-based on-demand drawing of high aspect-ratio elastomeric micropillar and its contact sensing application
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5717269/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29209022
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-17230-3
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