I am looking for ways to give orientation to micro-scaled silicon chips and I am thinking of using a 'life jacket' strategy to keep one side always floating and facing upwards. Are there any materials or surface modification techniques (like maybe if we make it super hydrophobic) to achieve this goal?
Alan F Rawle haha!!
Yes, but how to integrate them to the system? how to make a bubbly material? I’m not sure how can that be achieved without liquid penetrating inside and filling the voids.
like making Helium integrated PDMS😃
Jason Borejszo indeed playing with the center of mass would work. However, I don't have much freedom to play with the geometry. In my design, the only place I could add some 'weights' is the plane that should face up. So technically, that wouldn't work.
Hanie Kavand
People make suggestions and you shoot them down by providing more information that was not in the original question. Have you ever participated in 'Brainstorming'? If so, do you know the rules of the game?
All depends on the end application and what you're trying to achieve here. I don't think we know this or the dimensions of your Si - size of chip? Si never had much porosity in my day... Single chip or a bag of chips?
A lot depends on your substrate - simple surface tension will work (for a time). You can modify the fluid with a thickening agent such as corn starch. You can try a hydrophobic layer but most silicon substrates I've encountered have been hydrophobic anyway (without a covering of hydrophilic silica/silicon dioxide). Attach a layer of balsa wood to the top via epoxy. Suspend the Si by a thread in the correct position. And so on...
BTW, froth/foam is easy to achieve. Froth flotation is a large application.
Hi Alan F Rawle ,
Thank you. Working with miniaturized devices is super hard and if the orientation of the device is important for us, it would be challenging to keep a track of it all the times (especially when its in solutions). So if we give the micro-device a self-orienting power, then we don't have to worry about the 'orientation' parameter during the experiments. This can be super important when we don't have access to the device during the experiments (like when we implanted micro-devices). And if we are talking about implants, then we have a more narrow material bank or options to choose from.
I was thinking of different ways to keep stuff (micro-scaled chips that can be around 500 microns for example) floating. And for this purpose, I thought of accessorizing these micro-chips with 'life jackets'. From 'life-jacket', I was initially thinking about a polymer that could make the chip flow on water. I was thinking that If we just coat one side of the chip with this polymer, that side will always have an orientation that would make the opposite plane to have a constant direction as well.
Your 'bubble' comment made think about integrating Helium gas inside a polymer. Like if we could secure and entrap the gas inside, maybe it would help. And yes, that's just some weird ideas that might not even be applicable.
By the way, I found this article very interesting:
Article An ingestible self-orienting system for oral delivery of mac...
Hanie Kavand
A foam polymer is easily generated on any surface (the ‘air’ side of your chip?). This will provide orientation. Problem would be if you’d want to remove it later... A magnetite coating evaporated down would allow control and positioning with magnets in the way that they’re used to direct iron oxide nano particles with drug to the site of a tumor.
Thank you Alan F Rawle for suggesting foam polymers, I will look into it. There’s no need to remove it later I assume.
And yes, orienting using magnetic field was the first thought that also came to my mind but I thought it could be a bit harsh. That’s why I tried to solve the problem using materials and to get ideas from people expertise in polymer technology.
Trimesoyl 1,3,5‐tridimethyl malonate (TTDMM), trimesoyl 1,3,5‐tridiethyl malonate (TTDEM), trimesoyl 1,3,5‐tridipropyl malonate (TTDPM), trimesoyl 1,3,5‐tridibutyl malonate (TTDBM), and trimesoyl 1,3,5‐tridihexyl malonate (TTDHM) first‐generation dendrimers. TTDHM acts as superhydrophobe greater than polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) compounds.
Truly the trimesoyl 1,3,5‐tridihexyl malonate (TTDHM) is light weight and and it could be bound with the superadhesive superhydrophobe Melamine-Formaldehyde-Polyvinylpyrolidone (MFP) polymer resin. These are not corrosive and not affected by pH. Their thin film or film floats on hydrophilic liquids water and similar others.
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