Science Daily July 11, 2023
Motivated by the need to develop new point-of-care clinical tests researchers at Duke University developed a technology that only uses surface chemistry and gravity to manipulate the sequence, timing, movement, and interactions of discrete droplets across a surface solely by gravity. To demonstrate the application of the technology they fabricated a device that combined fluidic elements to carry out a multi-step enzymatic assay of LDH with minimal user intervention. To fabricate the device, they developed a surface coating toolbox of nine different coatings with three levels of wettability and three levels of slipperiness that could be independently tailored. They fabricated a device that has interconnected fluidic elements—pumps, flow resistors, and flow guides—on a highly slippery solid surface to precisely control the timing and sequence of motion of multiple droplets and their interactions on the surface. They demonstrated the application of this technology by performing a multi-step enzymatic assay of a clinically relevant analyte at the point-of-care… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLEÂ
