The overall goal of the proposed research is to establish a new collaboration between Dr. Aram Chung at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) from the US and Dr. Sunghoon Kwon at Seoul National University (SNU) in Korea for collaborative research on "Optofluidics". The two research groups will develop a new manufacturing paradigm based on interactions between fluids and light, which is referred to as Optofluidic Manufacturing. In short, Optofluidic Manufacturing is comprised of two coupled processes: (1) Inertial flow in a microchannel, and (2) Light activated polymerization. The Chung group has a strong expertise in understanding inertial flow for flow cross sectional engineering (Step 1). On the other hand, the Kwon group has pioneered the light activated polymerization process termed Optofluidic Maskless Lithography (OFML) (Step 2). Therefore, two research groups with distinct and complementary disciplines in fluid mechanics (Dr. Chung) and photonics (Dr. Kwon) make an ideal collaborative relationship. This synergistic "Opto+fluidic" integration will open new scientific directions to solve complex unconventional problems.
Complex shaped particles can provide unique properties and additional functionalities that can be of great practical use for applications such as self-assembly, photonics, biotechnology, structural materials, and pharmaceutics. However, it still remains challenging to fabricate large quantities of uniform 3D shaped particles with scalability, tunable geometries, and adjustable functionalities. Optofluidic manufacturing proposed in this project has the ability to precisely control flow and light conditions, allowing for dynamic reconfiguration of the fabrication. The process generates various scalable and tunable shaped particles using a single device with high-throughput and full automation. Briefly, flow streams of photosensitive fluids in a microchannel are horizontally engineered via fluid inertia and then exposed to orthogonal patterned UV light, synthesizing complex 3D shaped particles. The benefit of the proposed manufacturing system is its ability to be readily reconfigured. In contrast, most of the current particle manufacturing systems have a lack of tunability for particle shape, but by modulating flow and light settings on-the-fly, arbitrary particle shapes can be generated in real-time. Therefore, through this collaboration, full controls of fluid and light will be demonstrated, enabling a new paradigm of complex shaped particle generation.
