Tuesday July 1, 2008

We made PDMS as soon as we arrived. Sadly, I goofed up ad put the incorrect pre-polymer in the dispensing bottle. Not a tragedy, but not correct. We obtained a new dispensing bottle and filled it with the Sylgard 184 pre-polymer that we should be using. We mix up the PDMS in a 1:10 ratio, degas it, then fill ring molds made by masking silicon wafers. We cure the PDMS for 30 minutes in the 110 C oven, coll and de-mold them. We will take pictures of the molds using the Zeiss Axiovert 300M microscope (Scope 1), then analyze the pictures using Image J to determine the diameter of the wells in the PDMS (left by the posts on the molds). We will also use Image J to determine the distance between the wells. The profilometer will be used to determine the depth of the wells. From this data, we will create an Excel sheet to calculate the volume of the wells. This will allow us to characterize the molds we are working with.

After making our PDMS molds of hexagonal arrays of wells, Chelsea teaches us to use the Zeiss Axiovert 300 m. Refer to the procedure on the side of this blog.