The use of multiplexed high-throughput bioassays in applications such as drug discovery and clinical diagnostics has the potential to greatly expand the scope of experiments and data generation. We propose various encoded particle fabrication and design methodologies including shape and color encoding which make the resulting particles an exceptional tool for such uses. Our color encoding technology can create vivid, free-floating structural colored particles with multi-axis rotational control using a color-tunable magnetic material through a new printing method. Our color-barcoded magnetic microparticles offer a coding capacity easily into the billions with distinct magnetic handling capabilities. A DNA hybridization assay has been performed using the color-barcoded magnetic microparticles to demonstrate its multiplexing capabilities.
Optofluidic maskless lithography is a technique that can synthesize free-floating microstructures in microfluidic channels at the desired time and location within the field of view of the lithography system. By uniquely combining the concept of maskless and continuous-flow lithography techniques and microfluidic channels, we experimentally demonstrate real-time control of the in-situ polymerization process to dynamically synthesize extruded polymeric microstructures.
By leveraging the advantages of simple, inexpensive and intuitive 2D printing, we developed a “pen-based 4D printing” that enables the transformation of pen-drawn 2D precursors into 3D geometries. 2D-to-3D transformation of pen drawings is facilitated by surface tension–driven capillary peeling and floating of dried ink film when the drawing is dipped into an aqueous monomer solution. By ufabricatesing this printing method, We could convenient hydrogel structures with complex geometries, with the intention of expanding to more rigid materials in the future. Our approach benefits from both freestyle usability and high throughput fabrication via pen drawing and roll-to-roll processing. Focusing more on ’simple fabrication’, we envision soft robots with complex motion without complex fabrication steps.
