Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.130, No.43, 14044-14044, 2008
Patterning Reactive Microdomains inside Polydimethylsiloxane Microchannels by Trapping and Melting Functional Polymer Particles
This paper describes a facile technique to pattern reactive microdomains inside polydimethylsiloxane microchannels by utilizing polymer particles as the carrier of functional groups. The air/liquid interface formed in microchannels equipped with microwells exerts lateral force on the particles, trapping particles only inside the wells. We then fix the polymer matrix on the wells by melting the trapped particles to form reactive domains with flexible shapes and high resolution. We employed monodisperse poly(styrene-co-glycidyl methacrylate) microparticles having an epoxy group and patterned various types of microdomains with a resolution of several micrometers. Several tests confirmed the presence of