We have successfully demonstrated the fabrication of piezoelectric PDMS films utilizing casting, stacking, and micro plasma discharge processes. To realize electromechanical sensitivity, PDMS structures with micrometer-sized cells are implanted with positive and negative charges on the opposite internal surfaces of each cell, which behaves just like a dipole. In the prototype demonstration, multilayer PDMS films with inner cells of 50×50×50 μm 3 are fabricated and charged under electric fields up to 40 MV/m. The resulting cellular PDMS films show an elastic modulus of at least 12% lower than solid ones and a piezoelectric coefficient (d 33 ) up to 182 pC/N, which is about 10 times higher than that of common piezoelectric polymers (e.g., PVDF). As such, the demonstrated piezoelectric PDMS films could serve as soft and sensitive electromechanical transducers, which are desired for a variety of sensor and energy har-vesting applications.
This paper presents an on-demand, multi-step synthesis scheme that is capable of forming semi-permeable microcapsules on an integrated microfluidic chip. Threelayered PDMS devices with pneumatically actuated diaphragm-valves constructed on specially designed fluidicchannels are utilized to realize the encapsulation process. In the prototype demonstration, Na-alginate droplets are metered, trapped, and then drawn into CaCl 2 droplets, while they react and form solid Ca-alginate microcapsules on the interfaces. In addition, entrapment and transfer of the resulting capsules can also be performed on the same microfluidic chip to further process Ca-alginate into semipermeable alginate-PLL. As such, the demonstrated onchip synthesis scheme could potentially fulfill the realtime controllability on micro-encapsulation, which is desired for a variety of biological and medical applications.
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