This paper reports the development and characterization of a low-cost thin unimorph deformable mirror (DM) driven by positive voltage. The developed DM consists of both an inner actuator array and an outer ring actuator, which works two drive modes: the inner actuator array is used for aberration correction, while the outer ring actuator is used to generate an overall defocus bias. An analytical model based on the theory of plates and shells is studied for predicting the behavior of the developed DM. Measurement results indicate that dual direction maximum defocus deformations of the developed DM are $-14.3$ and $14.9\mathrm{\mu m}$, respectively, and the resonant frequency is $1.8\mathrm{kHz}$. The root-mean-square deformation of the mirror surface after correction is better than $\lambda /20$ for $\lambda =633\mathrm{nm}$. The replication of Zernike mode shapes up to the fifth order demonstrates that this developed DM is satisfactory for low-order aberration correction.

A novel high-precision digital droplet pipetting method that is used for nanoliter liquid handling with a reversibly pluggable microfluidic pipetting chip.

A single-cell sorter combined microfluidic printing with image processing to isolate single cells in a high-efficiency, high-throughput, and label-free manner.

Natural genetic promoters are regulated by multiple cis and trans regulatory factors. For quantitative studies of these promoters, the concentration of only a single factor is typically varied to obtain the dose response or transfer function of the promoters with respect to the factor. Such design of experiments has limited our ability to understand quantitative, combinatorial interactions between multiple regulatory factors at promoters. This limitation is primarily due to the intractable number of experimental combinations that arise from multifactorial design of experiments. To overcome this major limitation, we integrate impact printing and cell-free systems to enable multi-dimensional studies of genetic promoters. We first present a gradient printing system which comprises parallel piezoelectric cantilever beams as a scalable actuator array to generate droplets with tunable volumes in the range of 100 pL–10 nL, which facilitates highly accurate direct dilutions in the range of 1–10 000-fold in a 1 μL drop. Next, we apply this technology to study interactions between three regulatory factors at a synthetic genetic promoter. Finally, a mathematical model of gene regulatory modules is established using the multi-parametric and multi-dimensional data. Our work creates a new frontier in the use of cell-free systems and droplet printing for multi-dimensional studies of synthetic genetic constructs.