TECH SPECIAL....New paper will lead to cheap medical devices

 New paper will lead to cheap medical devices 

US researchers have created a new type of paper that repels liquids, including water and oil; work could lead to new generation of biomedical diagnostics devices

How about a paper material that wouldn’t be affected by water, oil or any other variety of liquids? Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a new type of paper that repels liquids, including water and oil.
    The researchers say the modified paper could be used as the foundation for a new generation of inexpensive biomedical diagnostics in which liquid samples would flow along patterns printed on the paper using special hydrophobic ink and a desktop printer.
    Thepaperwascreatedbymodifyingtheunderlyingnetworkofcellulosefibres,etchingoff surface ‘fluff’, and applying a thin chemical coating. The material uses nanometer — and micron-scale structures — plus a surface fluorocarbon to turn old-fashioned paper into an advanced material.
    “Paper is a very heterogeneous material composedoffibberswithdifferentsizes,different lengths and a non-circular cross-section,” Dennis Hess, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, said in an article posted on the university’s website
    “Webelievethisisthefirsttimethatasuperamphiphobicsurface–onethatrepelsallfluids –has been created on a flexible, traditional and heterogeneous material like paper.”
    The new paper, which is both water and oil repelling, can be made from standard softwoodandhardwoodfibres.Producingthenew paper begins with breaking up cellulose fibres into smaller structures using a mechanical grinding process. As in traditional paper processing, the fibres are then pressed in the presence of water – but then the water is removed and additional processing is done with the chemical butanol. Use of butanol inhibits the hydrogen bonding that normally takes place between cellulose fibres, allowing better control of their spacing.
    The second step involves using an oxygen plasma etching process – a technique commonly used in the microelectronics industry – to remove the layer of amorphous fluffy cellulose surface material, exposing the crystalline cellulose nanofibrils.
    Finally, a thin coating of a fluoropolymer is applied over the network of cellulose fibres. In testing, the paper was able to repel water, motor oil, ethylene glycol and n-hexadecane solvent.
    “We have shown that we can do the operations necessary for a microfluidic device,” Hess was quoted as saying, “We can move the droplet along a pattern, split the droplet and transfer the droplet from one piece of paper to another. We can do all of these operations on a two-dimensional surface.”
HOW THEY TWEAKED SIMPLE PAPER

• The ‘advanced paper’ was created by modifying the underlying network of cellulose fibres, etching off surface ‘fluff’, and applying a thin chemical coating.

• The material uses nanometer — and micronscale structures — plus a surface fluorocarbon to turn old-fashioned paper into an advanced material. MM130530