{"id":1393,"date":"2010-11-18T21:21:45","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T21:21:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1393"},"modified":"2010-11-18T21:21:45","modified_gmt":"2010-11-18T21:21:45","slug":"puny-pump-powerful-prospects","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?p=1393","title":{"rendered":"Puny pump, powerful prospects"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1394\" style=\"width: 346px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><strong> <\/strong><strong><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-1394\" href=\"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/?attachment_id=1394\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1394\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1394 \" title=\"scmicropump\" src=\"http:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/scmicropump.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"336\" height=\"158\" \/><\/a><\/strong><p id=\"caption-attachment-1394\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The electro-osmotic pump transports fluid through the central axis between the greenish silver electrodes. Bypasses are needed to prevent blockage by entrapped air bubbles (Photo: Friedjof Heuck)<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>The micropipette can deliver fog droplets of liquid to molecule-sized  targets. Pharmaceutical labs are following the developments with great  interest.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt&#8217;s not a world record, but it&#8217;s definitely one of the smallest  pumps ever made,\u201d says Dr Friedjof Heuck, of the microscopic pump he  developed at Dimes. German-born Heuck followed his professor, Urs  Staufer, from Switzerland to Delft three years ago. Prof. Staufer  (Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) wanted to extend the  scanning force microscope (a device that scans surfaces with resolution  in the nanometre range) with a micropipette, including a pump and  electrodes. After three years, Dr Heuck has succeeded in constructing an  electric pump that measures only 40 microns across (one half of a  hair). The active part is even thinner, about a tenth of a hair, and  pumps 35 picolitre (a millionth of a millionth litre) per second &#8211; it  would need nine centuries to pump a litre.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The electro-osmotic  pumping process only works on the microscopic scale. From the glass  surface, hydrogen ions diffuse into the solution, leaving a negatively  charged glass surface behind. Consequently, positive ions stick to the  glass. Applying an electric field between two electrodes on opposite  sides of the glass channel will pull this carpet of charges along the  sidewall, and with it the water column on top. \u201cIt only works at small  diameters,\u201d Dr Heuck explains, \u201cand if you make it too small then  friction will block it.\u201d<br \/>\nWhat Dr Heuck and Prof Staufer envision is  using microfluidic systems to administer drugs or biological messengers  onto a living cell and see how it reacts. Find the right substance and  you will see the cell pore opening. The puny pump could also be  integrated in lab-on-a-chip devices. A future doctor won&#8217;t need to send  your sample to the lab; he&#8217;ll just use a disposable one instead.<\/p>\n<p><em>Dr  Friedjof Heuck successfully defended his thesis, Developing and  Analysing sub-10 \u00b5m Fluidic Systems with integrated Electrodes for  Pumping and Sensing in Nanotechnology Applications, on 28 October 2010.  His PhD supervisor was Professor Urs Staufer.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delta.tudelft.nl\/nl\/wetenschap\/puny-pump-powerful-prospects\/22106\">Delta<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The micropipette can deliver fog droplets of liquid to molecule-sized targets. Pharmaceutical labs are following the developments with great interest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6],"tags":[287,375,386],"class_list":["post-1393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-delta","tag-micropipette","tag-scanning-force-microscope","tag-sfm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1393\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.joswassink.nl\/insight\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}