SMALL-SCALE REACTION

This might look like a tiny reaction setup, but it’s actually a series of microchannels made in poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) rubber. Chemists can add reagents into the flask (red) through a channel at the top of the image. Cold water flows through the blue channel, which serves as a condenser, and a metal heating coil heats the reaction from below. Researchers at Wageningen University, in the Netherlands, built this rubber-embedded setup by first suspending three-dimensionally printed plastic shapes in liquid PDMS, which they then allowed to harden, trapping the printed shapes. The team then washed the rubber with solvent to dissolve away the plastic, leaving behind the desired microchannels. In this particular mini reactor, a magnetic stir bar that was implanted into the flask during assembly and left behind after the solvent wash rotates about because of a magnetic stirring plate under the setup.

Submitted by Vittorio Saggiomo



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