Nanoliter Electronics for Wireless Chemistry
Experiments at the frontier of chemical and biological research increasingly require operation in very small fluid volumes for applications such as drug discovery, in vivo sensing, and microfluidics. This shrinking of sample volumes requires the development of a new toolkit for chemistry in environments inaccessible to macroscopic techniques. In this thesis, we show that microscale electronics is an invaluable tool for interacting with chemical environments at the microscale.We begin by presenting optically powered microscopic devices that drive electrochemical synthesis under incident light. This innovation results in an electrosynthesis technique that is compatible with existing infrastructure for high-throughput drug discovery. We then discuss progress toward the development of a wireless microscopic electrochemical sensor that is capable of onboard computation and optical wireless data transmission. We show initial results of this sensor and use it to detect a change in fluid salinity. Finally, we discuss electrochemical propulsion methods, and demonstrate a device with onboard silicon electronics that propels itself through solution by producing and ejecting bubbles electrochemically. Each of these devices demonstrates a different aspect of the functionality of this platform for wireless chemistry. Most significantly, these devices pave the way for more complex functionality in the future.