October 2009: We were present at the micromanufacturing conference in Coventry, UK, 20-21 October (MM Live 2009), and had interesting discussions with representatives from industry and academia.
September 2009: We are trying to establish a consortium to address the call FoF.NMP.2010-3 "Intelligent, scalable, manufacturing platforms and equipment for components with micro- and nano-scale functional features" from the EU commision.
June 2009: We presented a poster on lab-on-a-chip technology at pHealth 2009 in Oslo. See Publications.
March 2009: We had two presentations at the annual meeting of the Polymer Processing Society in India. See Publications.
February 2009: For some months we have assisted OptoSense in optimising a microoptics-based gas sensor. This has included moulding trials in our lab.
December 2008: We started a rheology study comparing relevant PC, PMMA, COC and COP materials, in particular regarding the rheological response near the glass transition temperature.
November 2008: Terje stayed two months with Prof. Henrik K. Rasmussen at the Technical University of Denmark (Copenhagen), working with viscoelastic flow simulations. He also worked on a mixer concept with Maciej Skolimowski and prof. Oliver Geschke.
July 2008: Terje attended the PhD summer school Micro mechanical system design and manufacturing, arranged by 4M Network of Excellence in Copenhagen June 23 - July 4. In a project, he and another PhD student designed and moulded a new passive mixer for microfluidics.
June 2008: Results from the mpc project were presented at the Polymer Processing Society conference in Italy. More than 1000 scientific papers were presented at this conference. The two contributions from the mpc project dealt with experimental results for microoptics components and numerical simulations, respectively. The former contribution was selected as an "excellent poster". The second was an oral presentation. Extended abstracts can be downloaded from the Publications page.
June 2008: A lab-on-a-chip developed by NorChip and SINTEF ICT (MiNaLab) has been injection moulded using a new mould insert (micromachined brass). Several researchers from NorChip and MiNaLab visited our lab during the moulding trials, and we had discussions of mutual benefit. The chips were characterised by white-light interferometry, followed by microfluidics tests, and functional tests after special surface treatment of channels and valves. SINTEF ICT and NorChip were well satisfied with the performance of the chips. From a fabrication point of view (injection moulding), we have correlated the degree of replication with processing parameters, and we have obtained practical experience in moulding lab-on-a-chip parts with two different COC polymer materials.
