Leveraging flexible pipette-based tool changes to transform liquid handling systems into dual-function sample...

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Chemical Engineering
• Robotics

Background:

• Soft materials synthesis is often limited by rapid self-assembly and poor mechanical strength, hindering characterization.
• Transferring soft materials to imaging platforms is slow or impossible, preventing real-time analysis.
• Understanding structure-property relationships requires numerous experiments due to material variability.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an integrated hardware platform for simultaneous pipetting and in-situ imaging.
• To enable real-time monitoring and characterization of dynamic soft material processes.
• To overcome limitations of traditional characterization techniques for soft materials.

Main Methods:

• Utilized the Opentron OT-2 liquid handling robot.
• Designed a 3D-printed adapter integrating a pipette tip and a USB camera.
• Integrated the camera with the robot's gantry for automated in-situ imaging during material synthesis and manipulation.

Main Results:

• Successfully demonstrated real-time monitoring of ionically crosslinked hydrogel formation and property evolution.
• Enabled high-throughput and combinatorial characterization of hydrogel properties.
• Validated the platform's capability for dynamic process analysis without manual intervention.

Conclusions:

• The integrated pipetting and in-situ imaging platform overcomes key limitations in soft material characterization.
• This novel system facilitates real-time, high-throughput analysis of dynamic material processes.
• The platform shows broad applicability in materials research, including crystallization, polymerization, and drug delivery.