CHED 110 |
| We are presenting a capillary electrophoresis (CE) experiment where students construct their own microfluidic devices and use these devices to separate mixtures of colored dyes based on the electrophoresis method. The channels used for the separation are fabricated between two glass slides using simple photolithography that requires only a UV lamp (wavelenght=340 nm) to polymerize a mixture of isobornyl acrylate and tetraethylene glycol dimethacrylate. The photomask is printed on ordinary transparency film. Colored dyes are used as the analytes so the students are able to observe the separations visually. Also, dyes are readily available in a wide variety of molecular sizes, ionic charges, and colors. Because the devices are easily constructed, guided-inquiry could be introduced into this experiment by having students modify important variables like channel shape, length, width and depth to optimize the devices for the separation. Students could also change buffer pH and ionic strength and use dyes of different charges and sizes to see how these factors affect electroosmotic flow and electrophoretic mobility. |
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General Posters
7:30 PM-9:30 PM, Sunday, April 6, 2008 Morial Convention Center -- Hall A, Poster
Sci-Mix
Division of Chemical Education |