Microfluidic devices have revolutionized chemical and biological studies�microfluidics provide a platform for high throughput analysis with minimal reagent volumes.  Microfluidic devices are especially useful tools to study a range of condensed phase phenomena; for example the initial interaction of two different solutions or the rearrangement of molecules in solution.  The workhorse polymer, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) allows for inexpensive and rapid fabrication of such devices. Unfortunately, these devices exhibit high background absorption in the infrared region making them unsuitable for IR spectroscopy. A novel fabrication technique affording devices as thin as 8 �m in PDMS and cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) materials will be presented.  Our optically thin devices have background absorbances of 0.3 OD and lower across wavelengths that range from the visible region to the mid-infrared region.  We demonstrate the utililty of these devices by probing protein conformational dynamics with two-dimensional infrared (2D IR) spectroscopy at early time scales with precision control.

Novel infrared transparent microfluidic devices

246th National Meeting (2013)

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