This award supports the development of a pH-stat instrument that does not require any liquid reagents to operate. This instrument will operate using low level electrical currents injected into tiny sample droplets via a suitable miniature electrode to produce hydrogen or hydroxyl ions needed to keep pH constant. This concept has the potential to enable fine chemical manipulations of specimens as small as a fraction of a rain drop, without reagents, easily controlled from a laptop computer. The injected current can be directly translated into the amount of acid or base added using Faraday's law. This may render the scheme calibration free. No dependence of the delivery mechanism on temperature is expected. The required instrumentation is simple, small, and portable. For all these reasons the main idea of this project is a new concept in experimental biology.
