Cell-cell separation device: A new approach to measuring intercellular detachment forces.

Whether at the molecular or cellular scale in organisms, cell-cell adhesion adapts to external mechanical cues arising from the static environment of cells and from dynamic interactions between neighboring cells. Cell-cell adhesion needs to resist detachment forces to secure the integrity and internal organization of organisms. In the past, various techniques have been developed to characterize adhesion properties of molecules and cells in vitro and to understand how cells sense and probe their environment.

Canalization-based super-resolution imaging using an individual van der Waals thin layer.

Canalization is an optical phenomenon that enables unidirectional light propagation without predefined waveguiding designs. Recently demonstrated using phonon polaritons in twisted van der Waals (vdW) layers of α-MoO, it offers unprecedented possibilities for controlling light-matter interactions at the nanoscale. However, practical applications have been hindered by the complex sample fabrication of twisted stacks.

Observation of naturally canalized phonon polaritons in LiVO thin layers.

Polariton canalization is characterized by intrinsic collimation of energy flow along a single crystalline axis. This optical phenomenon has been experimentally demonstrated at the nanoscale by stacking and twisting van der Waals (vdW) layers of α-MoO, by combining α-MoO and graphene, or by fabricating an h-BN metasurface. However, these material platforms have significant drawbacks, such as complex fabrication and high optical losses in the case of metasurfaces.

CRISPR-powered electrochemical microfluidic multiplexed biosensor for target amplification-free miRNA diagnostics.

Recently the use of microRNAs (miRNAs) as biomarkers for a multitude of diseases has gained substantial significance for clinical as well as point-of-care diagnostics. Amongst other challenges, however, it holds the central requirement that the concentration of a given miRNA must be evaluated within the context of other factors in order to unambiguously diagnose one specific disease. In terms of the development of diagnostic methods and devices, this implies an inevitable demand for multiplexing in order to be able to gauge the abundance of several components of interest in a patient's sample in parallel.

Interdigitated aluminium and titanium sensors for assessing epithelial barrier functionality by electric cell-substrate impedance spectroscopy (ECIS).

Electric cell-substrate impedance spectroscopy (ECIS) enables non-invasive and continuous read-out of electrical parameters of living tissue. The aim of the current study was to investigate the performance of interdigitated sensors with 50 μm electrode width and 50 μm inter-electrode distance made of gold, aluminium, and titanium for monitoring the barrier properties of epithelial cells in tissue culture. At first, the measurement performance of the photolithographic fabricated sensors was characterized by defined reference electrolytes.

Enhanced Protein Immobilization on Polymers-A Plasma Surface Activation Study.

Over the last years, polymers have gained great attention as substrate material, because of the possibility to produce low-cost sensors in a high-throughput manner or for rapid prototyping and the wide variety of polymeric materials available with different features (like transparency, flexibility, stretchability, etc.). For almost all biosensing applications, the interaction between biomolecules (for example, antibodies, proteins or enzymes) and the employed substrate surface is highly important.

Lift-Off Free Fabrication Approach for Periodic Structures with Tunable Nano Gaps for Interdigitated Electrode Arrays.

We report a simple, low-cost and lift-off free fabrication approach for periodic structures with adjustable nanometer gaps for interdigitated electrode arrays (IDAs). It combines an initial structure and two deposition process steps; first a dielectric layer is deposited, followed by a metal evaporation. The initial structure can be realized by lithography or any other structuring technique (e.

Growth and alignment of thin film organic single crystals from dewetting patterns.

Studying and understanding the conditions under which organic semiconductors can be engineered to form aligned single crystals in thin films is of primary importance owing to their unique orientation-dependent optoelectronic properties. Efforts to reach this goal by self-assembly from solution-processed films have been rewarded only with limited success. In this article we present a new method to grow single crystalline thin films via solvent annealing.