OZR opvangmandaat post doc Ignaas Jimidar

"Personalized and preventive medicine and pollution monitoring are examples that demand next-generation analytical devices that unlock the opportunity for faster, cheaper, and more sensitive screening and analysis. To address this need, scientists use microfluidics to generate isolated droplets that serve as micro-reactors to perform high-throughput assays. Incorporating dispersed beads in confined droplets has become popular to enhance the surface area for capturing analytes while decreasing the needed reaction volume. However, many challenges are still faced in handling beads, which can be labor-intensive and time-consuming.

For this purpose, it is proposed here to produce a radically new platform of spatially ordered arrays of immobilized colloidal particles, which can be coupled with an automated high-throughput droplet dispenser. The arrays are produced by leveraging our recent advancements in the rubbing assembly of dry powders into ordered 2D structures. DropletReACTS investigates two parallel routes to immobilize the particles: by applying a magnetic field to fix magnetic particles and by transferring particle arrays to substrates with sticky areas.

Testing these ordered particle arrays together with world-leading (bio-)analytical scientists will illustrate that these novel platforms are potentially groundbreaking, as a constant number of beads renders reactions more reproducible and efficient while drastic surface enhancement will provide a more sensitive analysis."