Micromechanics of soft materials using microfluidics

Micron-scale soft materials are finding a wide range of applications in bioengineering and molecular medicine, while also increasingly emerging as useful components for consumer products. The mechanical characterization of such microscale soft objects is conventionally performed with techniques such as atomic force microscopy or micropipette aspiration that measure the local properties of micron scale objects in a serial manner. To permit scalable characterization of the global mechanical properties of soft microscale objects, we developed and describe here a microfluidic platform that can be used for performing parallelized integrated measurements of the shear modulus of individual microscale particles. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach by characterizing the mechanical properties of multiple protein microgels in parallel, and show that the obtained values are in good agreement with conventional serial measurements. This platform allows parallelized in situ measurements of the mechanical properties of soft deformable micron-scale particles, and builds on scalable single-layer soft-photolithography fabrication, making the measurement system readily adaptable for a range of potential applications.

Automated summary

Micron-scale soft materials have diverse applications in bioengineering and molecular medicine, as well as consumer products. Researchers have developed a microfluidic platform for measuring the shear modulus of individual microscale particles in a parallel manner. The results obtained using this platform are consistent with traditional serial measurements. This platform allows for in situ parallel measurements of the mechanical properties of soft micron-scale particles, and can be easily adapted for various applications using scalable single-layer soft-photolithography fabrication.