Lab Romance

Did you spend too much time in the lab and missed another unique sunset at La Concha bay? This is how you can reproduce similarly magnificent light scattering effects using optical microscopes and thin polymer films.

This image shows a ~50 µm pore in the cross-sectional view of a hydrodynamic 3D flow-focusing microfluidic mixing device laser-written into a 150 µm-thick polyimide film. Such complex T-shaped flow devices allow to precisely and reproducibly mix two reactant solutions (of which one is entering through the pore and surrounded from both sides by the other) to induce self-organization phenomena on the nanoscale which can be tracked in real-time by small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) experiments at various positions along the flow channel. The optical effects occurred when imaging with an inverted optical microscope.

Image taken by Stefan Merkens.