Fluid-mediated Parallel Self-assembly of Polymeric Micro-capsules for Liquid Encapsulation and Release

Update time：Mar 17, 2014 [ A A A ]

Presented by Juergen Brugger, Professor and Laboratory Director at EPFL

Time: 16:00 p.m.-17:30 p.m., March 18, 2014

Location: F-P207, Printable Electronics Research Center, SINANO

Abstract:

Fluid-mediated self-assembly is one of the most promising routes for assembling and packaging smart microsystems in a scalable and cost-efficient way. We studied the pairwise fluidic self-assembly of 100 mm-sized SU-8 cylinders with respect to two driving mechanisms: capillary forces at the liquid–air interface and the hydrophobic effect while fully immersed in liquid. The pairwise self-assembly is controlled by shape recognition and selective surface functionalization. Surface energy contrast is introduced through oxygen plasma treatment and local deposition of a hydrophobic self-assembled monolayer, respectively leading to face-selective hydrophilic and hydrophobic behavior. When in bulk liquid, after less than a day face-wise self-assembly of several hundreds of components is achieved with a yield of up to 97% and with less than 1% of the cylinders assembled incorrectly. This technique is subsequently adopted for self-assembling half-capsules into closed micro-capsules, thereby entrapping a liquid during their self-assembly. The release of the liquid can subsequently be triggered in another medium, as intended for applications involving e.g. chemical reactors, environmental engineering and drug release.

In this seminar I will cover some original technological aspects for the fabrication of advanced MEMS such as stencil lithography, inkjet printing and liquid-based self-assembly.

Biography:

Juergen Brugger is Professor and Laboratory Director at EPFL, Switzerland with a primary affiliation in Microengineering and a secondary affiliation in Materials Science. Since 1995, Prof. Brugger is active in the field of interdisciplinary and experimental micro and nanotechnologies towards integrated micro-/nanosystems with components at mesoscopic scales. In his research, he combines methods of clean-room technologies with emerging micro and nanopatterning methods, such as scanning probes, stencil lithography and inkjet printing, to be applied to the field of information technologies and life sciences. J. Brugger has published over 150 peer-reviewed scientific publications. He is editorial board member of the journal "Nanotechnology". He served as program committee member of IEEE-IEDM, program chair of IEEE-NEMS, technical program committee of IEEE-MEMS, Hong-Kong 2010 and Cancun 2011, and was General Chair for the Eurosensors XXIII, Lausanne, 2009. He is currently ISC member of IEEE-MEMS and designated co-chair of MNE 2014 to be held in Lausanne, Switzerland and IEEE-MEMS 2015, to be held in Estoril/Portugal.

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