Sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic array for high-throughput sorting of large-volume biological compartments.

Droplet microfluidics has become a powerful tool in precision medicine, green biotechnology, and cell therapy for single-cell analysis and selection by virtue of its ability to effectively confine cells. However, there remains a fundamental trade-off between droplet volume and sorting throughput, limiting the advantages of droplet microfluidics to small droplets (<10 pl) that are incompatible with long-term maintenance and growth of most cells. We present a sequentially addressable dielectrophoretic array (SADA) sorter to overcome this problem. The SADA sorter uses an on-chip array of electrodes activated and deactivated in a sequence synchronized to the speed and position of a passing target droplet to deliver an accumulated dielectrophoretic force and gently pull it in the direction of sorting in a high-speed flow. We use it to demonstrate large-droplet sorting with ~20-fold higher throughputs than conventional techniques and apply it to long-term single-cell analysis of Saccharomyces cerevisiae based on their growth rate.

Three-dimensional characterization of ODS ferritic steel using by FIB-SEM serial sectioning method.

Considerable attention has been paid to the research of the electron tomography due to determine the three-dimensional (3D) structure of materials [1]. One of the electron tomography techniques, focused ion beam/scanning electron microscopy (FIB-SEM) imaging has advantages of high resolutions (10 nm), large area observation (µm order) and simultaneous energy dispersive x- ray microanalysis (EDS)/ electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD) analysis. The purpose of this study, three-dimensional EBSD analysis of ODS ferritic steel which carried out cold work using FIB-SEM equipment was conducted, and it aimed at analyzing the microstructure obtained there. The zone annealing tests were conducted for ferritic steel [2,3], which were produced through mechanical alloying and hot-extrusion. After zone annealing, specimens were mechanically polished with #400∼4000 emery paper, 1 µm diamond paste and alumina colloidal silica. The serial sectioning and the 3D-electron backscattering diffraction (3D-EBSD) analysis were carried out. We made the micro pillar (30 x 30 x 15 µm). The EBSD measurements were carried out in each layer after serial sectioning at a step size and milling depth was 80 nm with 30 slices. After EBSD analysis, the series of cross-sectional images were aligned according to arbitrarily specified areas and then stacked up to form a volume. Consequently, we obtained the 3D-IPF maps for ODS ferritic steel. In this specimen, the {111} and {001} grains are layered by turns. In addition, the volume fraction value of both plane are similar. The aspect ratio increases with specimen depth. The 3D-EBSD mapping is useful to analysis of the bulk material since this method obtain many microstructure information, such a shape, volume and orientation of the crystal, grain boundary.