Doctoral Thesis Defense

Manipulating Fluids and Fields in Multimaterial Fibers

Rodger Yuan

January 16, 2020

4:00 PM - 5:00 PM

MIT Haus-Allen Room (36-462)

A draft copy of the thesis is available for review in the Academic Office (6-107).

From conduits for fluid transport to the threads in highly absorbant textiles, high aspect ratio fibers and tubings have been used for thousands of years to manipulate fluids. The emergence of multimaterial thermal drawing as a method to fabricate fibers with precise spatial control of a broad range of materials, such as polymers and metals, enables the integration of new functionalities into these traditionally single material tools.

We investigate the use of thermally drawn fibers as a means to manipulate fluids and electric fields for various applications. As a conduit for fluids flowing in the axial direction of the fiber, we explore new regimes in inertial microfluidics by leveraging the geometric tunability of fiber channel cross-sections. By integrating electrodes onto the channel surface, we later design a microfluidic device capable of inertial-dielectrophoretic live/dead cell separation at throughputs as high as 100 uL/min. In addition, we show that UV-transparent hollow fibers can be used as templates to fabricate highly complex 3-D hydrogel microparticles with dielectrophoretic sub-particle localization. Finally, by integrating surface-interfaced porous structures into electrode-integrated fibers, we demonstrate fluid flow manipulation in the radial direction for application as a fiber sweat sensor.

Thesis Supervisor

Yoel Fink, Professor, Materials Science and Engineering and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Thesis Committee

Polina Anikeeva, Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering and Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Niels Holten-Andersen, Associate Professor, Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology