Session M4D 1-4244-0257-3/06/$20.00 © 2006 IEEE October 28 – 31, 2006, San Diego, CA 36 th ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference M4D-10 Work in Progress: Micro-/Nano-technology 'Lab-on- a-chip' Research Project for First-Year Honors Engineering Program Paul A. Clingan 1 , David L. Tomasko 2 , John Merrill 3 , Yosef Allam 4 1 Paul A. Clingan, Lecturer, College of Engineering, The Ohio State University, clingan.3@osu.edu 2 David L. Tomasko, Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, The Ohio State University, tomasko.1@osu.edu 3 John Merrill, First-year Engineering Program Director, College of Engineering, The Ohio State University, merrill.25@osu.edu 4 Yosef Allam, Graduate Teaching Associate, College of Engineering, The Ohio State University, allam.1@osu.edu Abstract – The Fundamentals of Engineering for Honors (FEH) alternate group project (ENG H193A) uses micro- and nano-technology to involve students in research in their first year through development of and experimentation with a silicone rubber 'Lab-on-a-chip'. Students seek to determine if a correlation exists between surface topology and cell adherence. They design and fabricate a lab-on-a-chip and use it to test the hypothesis. As part of the project, students use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software to better understand and visualize the forces acting on the cells. Additionally, students create a three-dimensional computer-aided model of a theoretical nanofactory which would be used to alter the structure of DNA. At the end of the term, students submit a written report, project notebook, and laboratory notebook detailing their experimental work as well as their nanofactory model. Finally, they present the results of their experimental work orally to a panel who judge the students’ results and understanding of the concepts involved. Index Terms - Computational fluid dynamics (CFD), lab-on-a- chip, nanotechnology, research project. BACKGROUND First-year engineering students enrolled in the FEH sequence at The Ohio State University complete a three-quarter sequence of four-credit classes that cover a wide variety of fundamental engineering topics and laboratory exercises. The first course (ENG H191) emphasizes engineering drawing and computer aided design (CAD). The second course (ENG H192) involves computer programming in C/C++ and Matlab. Both courses include a laboratory component designed to expose students to a wide variety of engineering disciplines and topics. The basic skills acquired in H191 and H192 are directly applied in the third course in the form of a quarter- long project (H193/H193A). The standard FEH project (ENG H193) is a design and build project in which students design, build, and program a small autonomous robot. The alternate FEH project (ENG H193A), discussed here, is a research project focusing on experimentation using a silicone lab-on-a- chip and involving micro- and nano-technology. PROJECT DESCRIPTION In 2004 the First-Year Engineering Program at The Ohio State University piloted a design course incorporating micro- and nano-technology as an alternate lab section in the standard Fundamentals of Engineering course (ENG 183). The pilot’s scope has been expanded and its focus shifted from design to research as the course is now offered as H193A. While the basic lab-on-a-chip concept from the pilot remains, H193A now uses the lab-on-a-chip as the centerpiece of a quarter-long research project. The overall goals of the course are: (1) provide students with the opportunity to gain communication, project management, and documentation skills through a long term group project, and (2) expose students to micro- and nano-technology, and (3) involve students in research at a very early point in their academic careers. The project includes three major aspects, lab-on-a-chip experiments, computational fluid dynamics, and the theoretical nanofactory design, and one minor one, the Cool Nano Topic of the Day (CNTOTD). LAB-ON-A-CHIP EXPERIMENTS The goal of the experiments was to investigate the effect of surface topology on yeast cell adherence. Students incubated yeast cells within the channels of a lab-on-a-chip and pumped water through the channels at various rates until some predetermined fraction of the cells were sheared from the channel surface. Toward that end, students began by designing and fabricating a two-piece, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) lab-on-a-chip. Given some relatively generic examples, students created a CAD model of the flow-through channels for their own chip. The channels typically included inlet and outlet ports for fluid flow and a port for introducing yeast cells into the testing section of the channel. A photomask was created from the CAD model and the pattern transferred to a silicon wafer using photolithography. The raised features on the resulting wafer corresponded to the channels and ports. PDMS was poured on to the wafer, allowed to cure, and removed from the wafer. The raised