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Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	van Dam, R. Michael
Author's Email Address	mvandam AT mednet.ucla.edu
URN	etd-12052005-234258
Persistent URL	http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechETD:etd-12052005-234258
Title	Solvent-resistant elastomeric microfluidic devices and applications
Degree	PhD
Option	Applied Physics
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Marc William Bockrath Committee Chair Rob Phillips Committee Member Robert H. Grubbs Committee Member Stephen R. Quake Committee Member
Keywords	solvent-resistant microfluidics fluoroelastomers microarray analysis combinatorial chemistry
Date of Defense	2005-08-30
Availability	mixed
Abstract Microfluidics is increasingly being used in many areas of biotechnology and chemistry to achieve reduced reagent volumes, improved performance, integration, and parallelism, among other advantages. Though early devices were based on rigid materials such as glass and silicon, elastomeric materials such as polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) are rapidly emerging as a ubiquitous platform for applications in biotechnology. This is due, in part, to simpler fabrication procedures and to the ability to integrate mechanical microvalves at vastly greater densities. For many applications in the areas of chemical synthesis and analysis, however, PDMS cannot replace glass and silicon due to its incompatibility with many solvents and reagents. Such areas could benefit tremendously from the development of an elastomeric microfluidic device technology that combines the advantages of PDMS with the property of solvent resistance. Simplified fabrication could increase the accessibility of microfluidics, and the possibility of dense valve integration could lead to significant advances in device sophistication. Applications could be more rapidly developed by design re-use due to the independence of mechanical valves on fluid properties (unlike electrokinetic pumping), and the property of permeability could enable novel fluidic functions for accessing a broader range of reactions than is possible in glass and silicon. The first half of this thesis describes our strategies and efforts to develop this new enabling technology. Several approaches are presented in Chapter 3, and two particularly successful ones, based on new elastomers (FNB and PFPE), are described in Chapters 4 and 5. Chapter 6 describes a novel method of fabricating devices from 3D molds that could expand the range of useful elastomers. The second half of this thesis discusses microfluidic combinatorial synthesis and high throughput screening—applications that take particular advantage of the ability to integrate thousands of individual valves and reaction chambers. Chapter 7 introduces several scalable device architectures and presents results of preliminary steps toward the synthesis of combinatorial DNA and peptide arrays. A novel method of performing universal gene expression analysis with combinatorial DNA arrays is described in Chapter 8 and an algorithm for predicting relationships among genes from gene expression array data is presented in Chapter 9.
Files	Filename       Size       Approximate Download Time (Hours:Minutes:Seconds)     28.8 Modem   56K Modem   ISDN (64 Kb)   ISDN (128 Kb)   Higher-speed Access    00_Front_Matter.pdf 140.73 Kb 00:00:39 00:00:20 00:00:17 00:00:08 < 00:00:01   01_Chapter_1.pdf 81.87 Kb 00:00:22 00:00:11 00:00:10 00:00:05 < 00:00:01   02_Chapter_2.pdf 626.01 Kb 00:02:53 00:01:29 00:01:18 00:00:39 00:00:03   03_Chapter_3.pdf 4.10 Mb 00:18:58 00:09:45 00:08:32 00:04:16 00:00:21   04_Chapter_4.pdf 21.53 Mb 01:39:40 00:51:15 00:44:51 00:22:25 00:01:54 05_Chapter_5.pdf 14.55 Mb 01:07:22 00:34:39 00:30:19 00:15:09 00:01:17   06_Chapter_6.pdf 31.55 Mb 02:26:03 01:15:06 01:05:43 00:32:51 00:02:48   07_Chapter_7.pdf 14.55 Mb 01:07:20 00:34:38 00:30:18 00:15:09 00:01:17   08_Chapter_8.pdf 939.50 Kb 00:04:20 00:02:14 00:01:57 00:00:58 00:00:05   09_Chapter_9.pdf 367.09 Kb 00:01:41 00:00:52 00:00:45 00:00:22 00:00:01   10_Appendix.pdf 78.86 Kb 00:00:21 00:00:11 00:00:09 00:00:04 < 00:00:01   11_Bibliography.pdf 190.02 Kb 00:00:52 00:00:27 00:00:23 00:00:11 00:00:01 thesis_20051109.pdf 87.26 Mb 06:43:59 03:27:46 03:01:47 01:30:53 00:07:45 indicates that a file or directory is accessible from the campus network only and must not be distributed to non-campus persons.