Future integrated design

ECCell MEMS architecture

ECCell
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This architecture shows cell site modules (blue) that may have significant internal structure to support electronic cell proliferation and processing. The ECCell modules (blue) have detailed structures (not shown) that will be investigated in the course of that project. The ECCell site modules are connected to a pressure driven resource and waste system (analogously to Vcc and Gnd in electrical circuits). Here there are two separate resource mixes (shown in red and green) that flow by the potential ECCell sites (blue) to the waste collection (grey). The ECCell modules are pressure decoupled from these flows via hydrodynamic barriers that may also involve gels. Internal electrically directed communication of specific molecules between modules occurs via electrophoretic transport of charged informational molecules (possibly packaged as micelles) along the yellow channels. In this version a bifurcation tree is used for resource delivery and waste removal to ensure contamination free independent operation of each module. 

The ability to employ high density electrical actuation, through the integration of multilayer wiring in the microfuidic chips that has been established in PACE, opens up many opportunities for integrated cell complementation and processing. It is of course straightforward to propose microchannel layouts that juxtapose amplification, separation and selection processing, for example using the basic H-structure manipulator elements developed by RUB-BioMIP. Such a juxtaposition can be seen here (link to Goran's graphic). 


However, integration of multiple functionalities in a programmable way actually requires an extension of the basic architecture design that separates a transport network from a resource delivery network. This will be the subject of a follow-on project ECCell, for which a preliminary architecture is shown in the top left-hand corner.



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