The work could be a step toward understanding the effects behind the phenomenon of static electricity, in which electric charge accumulates on materials after they are rubbed or touched together.

For their material, they chose polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) -- a clear silicone-based polymer out of which they made plastic-like blocks. At this point, the leading hypothesis for why identical ...

Due to the benefits of PDMS, Quake sought to create valves and pumps in the same material to enable researchers to conduct high degrees of automation within a chip. As an extension of Whitesides’ ...

Analysis of the materials of the chips revealed that there was degradation of the chips in the bare regions, but there was only limited degradation in the PDMS-coated regions. This shows that PDMS ...

Soft lithography and 3D printing are two nanofabrication techniques, each offering advantages for microfluidics and ...

Unlike conventional lithography that uses rigid photomasks, soft lithography employs elastomeric materials, typically polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), to create patterns and structures with high fidelity ...

The result was published in Advanced Materials. One of the main challenges ... These trenches were then encapsulated with PDMS to produce a programmable actuator that retains both speed and ...

Moreover, it should be a material that does not require high-temperature processing, ultraviolet (UV) curing, or overly intricate techniques. It chose polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to coat the ...