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    PublicationOpen Access
    3D bioprinted organ?on?chips
    (Wiley, 2022) Mustafaoğlu, Nur; Zhang, Yu Shrike; Department of Mechanical Engineering; N/A; N/A; Dabbagh, Sajjad Rahmani; Sarabi, Misagh Rezapour; Birtek, Mehmet Tuğrul; Taşoğlu, Savaş; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; KU Arçelik Research Center for Creative Industries (KUAR) / KU Arçelik Yaratıcı Endüstriler Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi (KUAR); Koç Üniversitesi İş Bankası Yapay Zeka Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi (KUIS AI)/ Koç University İş Bank Artificial Intelligence Center (KUIS AI); College of Engineering; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; N/A; N/A; N/A; 291971
    Organ-on-a-chip (OOC) platforms recapitulate human in vivo-like conditions more realistically compared to many animal models and conventional two-dimensional cell cultures. OOC setups benefit from continuous perfusion of cell cultures through microfluidic channels, which promotes cell viability and activities. Moreover, microfluidic chips allow the integration of biosensors for real-time monitoring and analysis of cell interactions and responses to administered drugs. Three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting enables the fabrication of multicell OOC platforms with sophisticated 3D structures that more closely mimic human tissues. 3D-bioprinted OOC platforms are promising tools for understanding the functions of organs, disruptive influences of diseases on organ functionality, and screening the efficacy as well as toxicity of drugs on organs. Here, common 3D bioprinting techniques, advantages, and limitations of each method are reviewed. Additionally, recent advances, applications, and potentials of 3D-bioprinted OOC platforms for emulating various human organs are presented. Last, current challenges and future perspectives of OOC platforms are discussed.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    3D printing of elastomeric bioinspired complex adhesive microstructures
    (Wiley, 2021) Dayan, Cem Balda; Chun, Sungwoo; Krishna Subbaiah, Nagaraj; Drotlef, Dirk Michael; Akolpoğlu, Mükrime Birgül; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Sitti, Metin; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; College of Engineering; School of Medicine; 297104
    Bioinspired elastomeric structural adhesives can provide reversible and controllable adhesion on dry/wet and synthetic/biological surfaces for a broad range of commercial applications. Shape complexity and performance of the existing structural adhesives are limited by the used specific fabrication technique, such as molding. To overcome these limitations by proposing complex 3D microstructured adhesive designs, a 3D elastomeric microstructure fabrication approach is implemented using two-photon-polymerization-based 3D printing. A custom aliphatic urethane-acrylate-based elastomer is used as the 3D printing material. Two designs are demonstrated with two combined biological inspirations to show the advanced capabilities enabled by the proposed fabrication approach and custom elastomer. The first design focuses on springtail- and gecko-inspired hybrid microfiber adhesive, which has the multifunctionalities of side-surface liquid super-repellency, top-surface liquid super-repellency, and strong reversible adhesion features in a single fiber array. The second design primarily centers on octopus- and gecko-inspired hybrid adhesive, which exhibits the benefits of both octopus- and gecko-inspired microstructured adhesives for strong reversible adhesion on both wet and dry surfaces, such as skin. This fabrication approach could be used to produce many other 3D complex elastomeric structural adhesives for future real-world applications.
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    Publication
    A detailed investigation of the effect of calcium crosslinking and glycerol plasticizing on the physical properties of alginate films
    (Elsevier, 2020) Berberoglu, Melisa; Bener, Semira; Aydelik-Ayazoglu, Sena; Bayraktar, Halil; Catalgil-Giz, Huceste; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Alaca, Burhanettin Erdem; Giz, Ayşe Su; Faculty Member; Master Student; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Koç University Surface Science and Technology Center (KUYTAM) / Koç Üniversitesi Yüzey Teknolojileri Araştırmaları Merkezi (KUYTAM); College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; 115108; N/A
    Alginates attract growing interest due to their biocompatible and biodegradable nature. Here, a wide spectrum of glycerol added alginate films (from 0 to 30% w/w, glycerol/alginate) were prepared and crosslinked by four different concentrations of calcium chloride solutions (0.5, 1, 1.5, 2%, w/w). This is the first investigation involving variation of both the plasticizer and crosslinker concentrations in twenty different compositions. It is shown that glycerol and calcium have a synergic effect on the mechanical properties and the behavior of crosslinked and plasticized alginate films cannot be predicted by studies, which vary only one of these, keeping the other constant. Without glycerol, crosslinking had a negligible effect on tensile behavior, but with glycerol addition, the effect of crosslinking became evident in mechanical properties. Calcium and glycerol concentrations exhibited a combined effect, displaying optimum combinations with good strength and fracture strain properties. Crosslinking increased the thermal resistance of all films. Low crosslinked high swelling films and highly crosslinked low swelling films were prepared. Water vapor permeability of films decreased regularly with increasing calcium concentration. The films exhibited high transmittance in the visible region. The results showed that alginate films have an appreciable potential in wound dressing and food packaging applications. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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    PublicationOpen Access
    A tissue adhesion-controllable and biocompatible small-scale hydrogel adhesive robot
    (Wiley, 2022) Lee, Y.W.; Chun, S.; Son, D.; Hu, X.; Schneider, M.; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Sitti, Metin; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; College of Engineering; School of Medicine; 297104
    Recently, the realization of minimally invasive medical interventions on targeted tissues using wireless small-scale medical robots has received an increasing attention. For effective implementation, such robots should have a strong adhesion capability to biological tissues and at the same time easy controlled detachment should be possible, which has been challenging. To address such issue, a small-scale soft robot with octopus-inspired hydrogel adhesive (OHA) is proposed. Hydrogels of different Young's moduli are adapted to achieve a biocompatible adhesive with strong wet adhesion by preventing the collapse of the octopus-inspired patterns during preloading. Introduction of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogel for dome-like protuberance structure inside the sucker wall of polyethylene glycol diacrylate hydrogel provides a strong tissue attachment in underwater and at the same time enables easy detachment by temperature changes due to its temperature-dependent volume change property. It is finally demonstrated that the small-scale soft OHA robot can efficiently implement biomedical functions owing to strong adhesion and controllable detachment on biological tissues while operating inside the body. Such robots with repeatable tissue attachment and detachment possibility pave the way for future wireless soft miniature robots with minimally invasive medical interventions.
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    Accelerated oxidation in ductile refractory high-entropy alloys
    (Elsevier, 2018) Sheikh, Saad; Bijaksana, Muhammad Kurnia; Shafeie, Samrand; Lozinko, Adrianna; Gan, Lu; Tsao, Te-Kang; Klement, Uta; Murakami, Hideyuki; Guo, Sheng; N/A; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Motallebzadeh, Amir; Canadinç, Demircan; Researcher; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Koç University Surface Science and Technology Center (KUYTAM) / Koç Üniversitesi Yüzey Teknolojileri Araştırmaları Merkezi (KUYTAM); N/A; N/A; College of Engineering; N/A; 23433
    Refractory high-entropy alloys (RHEAs) are promising candidates for new-generation high temperature materials, but they generally suffer from room temperature brittleness and unsatisfactory high-temperature oxidation resistance. There currently lack efforts to address to these two critical issues for RHEAs at the same time. In this work, the high temperature oxidation resistance of a previously identified ductile Hf0.5Nb0.5Ta0.5Ti1.5Zr RHEA is studied. An accelerated oxidation or more specifically, pesting, in the temperature range of 600-1000 degrees C is observed for the target RHEA, where the oxidation leads the material to catastrophically disintegrate into powders. The pesting mechanism is studied here, and is attributed to the failure in forming protective oxide scales accompanied by the accelerated internal oxidation. The simultaneous removal of zirconium and hafnium can eliminate the pesting phenomenon in the alloy. It is believed that pesting can also occur to other equiatomic and non-equiatomic quinary Hf-Nb-Ta-Ti-Zr or quaternary Hf-Nb-Ti-Zr and Hf-Ta-Ti-Zr RHEAs, where all currently available ductile RHEAs are identified. Therefore, the results from this work will provide crucial perspectives to the further development of RHEAs as novel high-temperature materials, with balanced room-temperature ductility and high-temperature oxidation resistance.
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    Acoustic streaming-induced multimodal locomotion of bubble-based microrobots
    (Wiley, 2023) Mahkam, Nima; Aghakhani, Amirreza; Sheehan, Devin; Gardi, Gaurav; Katzschmann, Robert; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Sitti, Metin; Department of Mechanical Engineering; College of Engineering; School of Medicine
    Acoustically-driven bubbles at the micron scale can generate strong microstreaming flows in its surrounding fluidic medium. The tunable acoustic streaming strength of oscillating microbubbles and the diversity of the generated flow patterns enable the design of fast-moving microrobots with multimodal locomotion suitable for biomedical applications. The acoustic microrobots holding two coupled microbubbles inside a rigid body are presented; trapped bubbles inside the L-shaped structure with different orifices generate various streaming flows, thus allowing multiple degrees of freedom in locomotion. The streaming pattern and mean streaming speed depend on the intensity and frequency of the acoustic wave, which can trigger four dominant locomotion modes in the microrobot, denoted as translational and rotational, spinning, rotational, and translational modes. Next, the effect of various geometrical and actuation parameters on the control and navigation of the microrobot is investigated. Furthermore, the surface-slipping multimodal locomotion, flow mixing, particle manipulation capabilities, the effective interaction of high flow rates with cells, and subsequent cancerous cell lysing abilities of the proposed microrobot are demonstrated. Overall, these results introduce a design toolbox for the next generation of acoustic microrobots with higher degrees of freedom with multimodal locomotion in biomedical applications. Addressing microrobots' limited maneuverability; the acoustically-powered micron-scale robots with microorganism-inspired motions are developed. These robots house two coupled microbubbles that create complex acoustic-streaming yielding various flow patterns and allowing the microrobots to move swiftly. These microrobots have proven to excel in multimodal locomotion, flow mixing, and cell lysing, making them ideal for diverse biomedical uses.image
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    PublicationOpen Access
    Adaptive self-sealing suction-based soft robotic gripper
    (Wiley, 2021) Song, Sukho; Drotlef, Dirk-Michael; Son, Donghoon; Koivikko, Anastasia; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Sitti, Metin; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; School of Medicine; College of Engineering; 297104
    While suction cups prevail as common gripping tools for a wide range of real-world parts and surfaces, they often fail to seal the contact interface when engaging with irregular shapes and textured surfaces. In this work, the authors propose a suction-based soft robotic gripper where suction is created inside a self-sealing, highly conformable and thin flat elastic membrane contacting a given part surface. Such soft gripper can self-adapt the size of its effective suction area with respect to the applied load. The elastomeric membrane covering edge of the soft gripper can develop an air-tight self-sealing with parts even smaller than the gripper diameter. Such gripper shows 4 times higher adhesion than the one without the membrane on various textured surfaces. The two major advantages, underactuated self-adaptability and enhanced suction performance, allow the membrane-based suction mechanism to grip various three-dimensional (3D) geometries and delicate parts, such as egg, lime, apple, and even hydrogels without noticeable damage, which can have not been gripped with the previous adhesive microstructures-based and active suction-based soft grippers. The structural and material simplicity of the proposed soft gripper design can have a broad use in diverse fields, such as digital manufacturing, robotic manipulation, transfer printing, and medical gripping.
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    Adsorption, folding, and packing of an amphiphilic peptide at the air/water interface
    (amer Chemical Soc, 2012) N/A; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Engin, Özge; Sayar, Mehmet; Master Student; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering, College of Engineering; N/A; 109820
    Peptide oligomers play an essential role as model compounds for identifying key motifs in protein structure formation and protein aggregation. Here, we present our results, based on extensive molecular dynamics simulations, on adsorption, folding, and packing within a surface monolayer of an amphiphilic peptide at the air/water interface. Experimental results suggest that these molecules spontaneously form ordered monolayers at the interface, Adopting a beta-hairpin-like structure within the surface layer. Our results reveal that the beta-hairpin structure can be observed both in bulk and at the air/water interface. However, the presence of an interface leads to ideal partitioning of the hydrophobic and hydrophilic residues, and therefore reduces the conformational space for the molecule and increases the stability of the hairpin structure. We obtained the adsorption free energy of a single beta-hairpin at the air/water interface, and analyzed the enthalpic and entropic contributions. the adsorption process is favored by two main factors: (1) Free-energy reduction due to desolvation of the hydrophobic side chains of the peptide and release of the water molecules which form a cage around these hydrophobic groups in bulk water. (2) Reduction of the total air/water contact area at the interface upon adsorption of the peptide amphiphile. By performing mutations on the original molecule, we demonstrated the relative role of key design features of the peptide. Finally, by analyzing the potential of mean force among two peptides at the interface, we investigated possible packing mechanisms for these molecules within the surface monolayer.
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    An electrochemical gelation method for patterning conductive PEDOT:PSS hydrogels
    (2019) Feig, Vivian Rachel; Tran, Helen; Lee, Minah; Liu, Kathy; Huang, Zhuojun; Mackanic, David G.; Bao, Zhenan; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Beker, Levent; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; College of Engineering; 308798
    Due to their high water content and macroscopic connectivity, hydrogels made from the conducting polymer PEDOT:PSS are a promising platform from which to fabricate a wide range of porous conductive materials that are increasingly of interest in applications as varied as bioelectronics, regen-erative medicine, and energy storage. Despite the promising properties of PEDOT:PSS-based porous materials, the ability to pattern PEDOT:PSS hydrogels is still required to enable their integration with multifunctional and multichannel electronic devices. In this work, a novel electrochemical gelation (“electrogelation”) method is presented for rapidly patterning PEDOT:PSS hydrogels on any conductive template, including curved and 3D surfaces. High spatial resolution is achieved through use of a sacrificial metal layer to generate the hydrogel pattern, thereby enabling high-performance conducting hydrogels and aerogels with desirable material properties to be introduced into increasingly complex device architectures
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    An ultra-compact and wireless tag for battery-free sweat glucose monitoring
    (Elsevier Advanced Technology, 2022) N/A; Department of Mechanical Engineering; N/A; N/A; Department of Mechanical Engineering; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Mirzajani, Hadi; Abbasiasl, Taher; Mirlou, Fariborz; İstif, Emin; Bathaei, Mohammad Javad; Dağ, Çağdaş; Deyneli, Oğuzhan; Dereli, Dilek Yazıcı; Beker, Levent; Researcher; PhD Student; PhD Student; Other; PhD Student; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Faculty Member; Department of Mechanical Engineering; Koç Üniversitesi İş Bankası Enfeksiyon Hastalıkları Uygulama ve Araştırma Merkezi (EHAM) / Koç University İşbank Center for Infectious Diseases (KU-IS CID); n2STAR-Koç University Nanofabrication and Nanocharacterization Center for Scientifc and Technological Advanced Research; Koç University Research Center for Translational Medicine (KUTTAM) / Koç Üniversitesi Translasyonel Tıp Araştırma Merkezi (KUTTAM); College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; College of Engineering; Graduate School of Sciences and Engineering; N/A; School of Medicine; School of Medicine; College of Engineering; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; N/A; 171914; 179659; 308798
    Glucose monitoring before, during, and after exercise is essential for people with diabetes as exercise increases the risk of activity-induced hyper- and hypo-glycemic events. The situation is even more challenging for athletes with diabetes as they have impaired metabolic control compared to sedentary individuals. In this regard, a compact and noninvasive wearable glucose monitoring device that can be easily worn is critical to enabling glucose monitoring. This report presents an ultra-compact glucose tag with a footprint and weight of 1.2 cm(2) and 0.13 g, respectively, for sweat analysis. The device comprises a near field communication (NFC) chip, antenna, electrochemical sensor, and microfluidic channels implemented in different material layers. The device has a flexible and conformal structure and can be easily attached to different body parts. The battery-less operation of the device was enabled by NFC-based wireless power transmission and the compact antenna. Femtosecond laser ablation was employed to fabricate a highly compact and flexible NFC antenna. The proposed device demonstrated excellent operating characteristics with a limit of detection (LOD), limit of quantification (LOQ), and sensitivity of 24 mu M, 74 mu M, and 1.27 mu A cm(-2) mM(-1), respectively. The response of the proposed sensor in sweat glucose detection and quantification was validated by nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). Also, the device's capability in attachment to the body, sweat collection, and glucose measurement was demonstrated through in vitro and in vivo experiments, and satisfactory results were obtained.