BIOMEMS Group Presentation
The BioMEMS group has been created in July 2007. The members of the group are assistant professors and professors of the University of Lille as well as researchers at CNRS. Some of them have been working on microfluidic devices and biosensors since 2002. The BioMEMS group is an active user of the cleanrooms and characterization platform of IEMN. Their expertise covers a wide spectrum from technologies development to prototype testing for applications in environment control, food quality, or medicine:
- New Gold Label for Cell Tracking
On the fundamental side, the BioMEMS group studies on one hand the interactions between liquids and surfaces (in particular for hydrophobic surfaces) and on the other hand the interactions between electromagnetic fields and biological species.
The first topic aims at fabricating and characterizing superhydrophobic surfaces for droplets displacement by electrowetting on dielectric (EWOD) technology. The second topic aims at designing multiparametric biosensors, integrated in high density biochips, for the real time, label free, analysis of biological cells, from tissues to single cells.
Thanks to the expertise of the group in droplets handling by EWOD, various projects are currently carried on, for example on surface self-cleaning, cells culture in droplets, molecular analysis by mass spectrometry using silicon nano-wires, or on the scaling of the surface Plasmon resonance (SPR) technique. Other projects are devoted to ultra wide band dielectric spectroscopy (DC to MegaHertz) or to low frequency noise measurement which are very interesting techniques to monitor the dynamics of biological systems. A new project is focused on the use of piezoelectric microbeam for this kind of analysis.
At last, at the periphery of the central topic, the BioMEMS group dedicates few resources to very innovative projects and/or project which strengthen its collaboration with local companies (i.e.: through the competitivity poles). These projects study for instance the use of flexible materials (e.g.; textile) as potential substrates for digital microfluidic applications, or the use of intracellular metallic dyes to increase the contrast of X-ray radiography.
