This paper presents an investigation on the humidity sensitivity of deposited multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) networks using ac dielectrophoresis (DEP) between interdigitated electrodes (IDEs). MWCNTs dispersed in ethanol were trapped and enriched between IDEs on a Si/SiO₂ substrate under a positive DEP force. After the DEP process, the ethanol was evaporated and the MWCNT network on a substrate with IDEs was put into a furnace for repeated thermal annealing. It was found that the resistance stability of the network was effectively improved through thermal annealing. The humidity sensitivity was obtained by measuring the resistance of the MWCNT network with different relative humidity at room temperature. The experimental results show the resistance increases linearly with increasing the relative humidity from 25% to 95% RH with a sensitivity of 0.5%/%RH. The MWCNT networks have a reversible humidity sensing capacity with response time and recovery time of about 3 s and 25 s, respectively. The resistance is dependent on temperature with a negative coefficient of about -0.33%/K in a temperature range from 293 K to 393 K.

Rapid separation of white blood cells from whole blood sample is often required for their subsequent analyses of functions and phenotypes, and many advances have been made in this field. However, most current microfiltration-based cell separation microfluidic chips still suffer from low-throughput and membrane clogging. This paper reports on a high-throughput and clogging-free microfluidic filtration platform, which features with an integrated bidirectional micropump and commercially available polycarbonate microporous membranes. The integrated bidirectional micropump enables the fluid to flush micropores back and forth, effectively avoiding membrane clogging. The microporous membrane allows red blood cells passing through high-density pores in a cross-flow mixed with dead-end filtration mode. All the separation processes, including blood and buffer loading, separation, and sample collection, are automatically controlled for easy operation and high throughput. Both microbead mixture and undiluted whole blood sample are separated by the platform effectively. In particular, for white blood cell separation, the chip recovered 72.1% white blood cells with an over 232-fold enrichment ratio at a throughput as high as 37.5 μl/min. This high-throughput, clogging-free, and highly integrated platform holds great promise for point-of-care blood pretreatment, analysis, and diagnosis applications.

Microfiltration is a compelling method to separate particles based on their distinct size and deformability. However, this approach is prone to clogging after processing a certain number of particles and forming bubbles in the separation procedure, which often leads to malfunctioning of devices. In this work, we report a bubble-free and clogging-free microfluidic particle separation platform with high throughput. The platform features an integrated bidirectional micropump, a hydrophilic microporous filtration membrane and a hydrophobic porous degassing membrane. The bidirectional micropump enables the fluid to flow back and forth repeatedly, which flushes the filtration membrane and clears the filtration micropores for further filtration, and to flow forward to implement multi-filtration. The hydrophobic porous membrane on top of the separation channel removes air bubbles forming in the separation channel, improving the separation efficiency and operational reliability. The microbead mixture and undiluted whole blood were separated using the microfluidic chip. After 5 cycles of reverse flushing and forward re-filtration, a 2857-fold enrichment ratio and an 89.8% recovery rate of 10 μm microbeads were achieved for microbead separation with 99.9% removal efficiency of 2 μm microbeads. After 8 cycles, white blood cells were effectively separated from whole blood with a 396-fold enrichment ratio and a 70.6% recovery rate at a throughput of 39.1 μl min⁻¹, demonstrating that the platform can potentially be used in biomedical applications.

In this paper, we present a membrane peristaltic micro pump driven by a rotating motor with magnetically attracted steel balls for lab-on-a-chip applications. The fabrication process is based on standard soft lithography technology and bonding of a PDMS layer with a PMMA substrate. A linear flow rate range ~490 μL/min was obtained by simply varying the rotation speed of a DC motor, and a maximum back pressure of 592 Pa was achieved at a rotation speed of 43 rpm. The flow rate of the pump can also be adjusted by using steel balls with different diameters or changing the number of balls. Nevertheless, the micro pump can also work in high speed mode. A high back pressure up to 10 kPa was achieved at 500 rpm using a high speed DC motor, and an utmost flow rate up to 5 mL/min was reached.

Traditional lithography plays a significant role in the fabrication of micro- and nanostructures. Nevertheless, the fabrication process still suffers from the limitations of manufacturing devices with a high aspect ratio or three-dimensional structure. Recent findings have revealed that shrink polymers attain a certain potential in micro- and nanostructure manufacturing. This technique, denoted as heat-induced shrink lithography, exhibits inherent merits, including an improved fabrication resolution by shrinking, controllable shrinkage behavior, and surface wrinkles, and an efficient fabrication process. These merits unfold new avenues, compensating for the shortcomings of traditional technologies. Manufacturing using shrink polymers is investigated in regard to its mechanism and applications. This review classifies typical applications of shrink polymers in micro- and nanostructures into the size-contraction feature and surface wrinkles. Additionally, corresponding shrinkage mechanisms and models for shrinkage, and wrinkle parameter control are examined. Regarding the size-contraction feature, this paper summarizes the progress on high-aspect-ratio devices, microchannels, self-folding structures, optical antenna arrays, and nanowires. Regarding surface wrinkles, this paper evaluates the development of wearable sensors, electrochemical sensors, energy-conversion technology, cell-alignment structures, and antibacterial surfaces. Finally, the limitations and prospects of shrink lithography are analyzed.