An optical micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) structure is provided. The structure includes an elastomer membrane, a plurality of polymer fibers attached to the elastomer membrane, an array of detectors operatively connected to the plurality of polymer fibers at a first end of the plurality of polymer fibers, and a microlens array operatively connected to the plurality of polymer fibers at...

The immersion precipitation process makes most commercial polymeric membranes, which enjoy widespread use in water filtration and purification. In this work, a ternary Cahn-Hilliard formulation incorporating a Flory-Huggins homogeneous free energy function is used to model both initial diffusion and the liquid-liquid demixing stage of the immersion precipitation process, which determines much o...

Biological adhesion typically occurs through discrete cross bridges between complementary molecules on adjacent membranes. Here we report quantitative measurements of the binding distance between a lipid membrane functionalized with ligands on flexible polymer tether chains and a second membrane bearing complementary receptors using the surface force apparatus technique. The binding distance is...

Antibacterial polysiloxane polymers with pending tert-butylamine groups are a novel class of compounds that are compatible with silicone elastomers, but their mechanism of action is not well understood. The research into their action mechanism was conducted on a polysiloxane copolymer grafted with tert-butylaminoethyl methacrylate and covalently attached fluorescein. Fluorometric measurements r...

Polymer translocation through a nanopore in a membrane is investigated theoretically. Recent experiments on voltage-driven DNA and RNA translocations through a nanopore indicate that the size and geometry of the pore are important factors in polymer dynamics. A theoretical approach is presented which explicitly takes into account the effect of the nanopore length and diameter for polymer motion...