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Cooporative Research Centre for Polymers (CRCp)

The CRCp project is a joint venture between the cooporative research centre for polymers and the Center for Micro-Photonics and other participants and is at the interface of cutting edge polymer materials science for polymer applications and devices. At Swinburne the research program develops and utilizes refractive index engineering, photo polymerisable phase change and surface funcionalisation of polymer materials for nanophotonic and biophotonic device fabrication.

Project Overview

The CRCp focuses on numerous areas of polymer research including bioltechnoogy, agriculture, energy, manufacturing and mining. At Swinburne our CRCp research revolves around the use of polymers for nanophotonic and biophotnic device applications in the biotechnology, manufacturing and energy fields.

Group:
Members:
Collaborators:
Australian Stem Cell Centre
 
CSIRO
 
Monash University
 
Romar Engineering
 
University of Wollongong
 
ANSTO
 

Research Areas

Microfluidics
This project aims to develop novel optical and microfluidic technology for studying biological models in three-dimensional microenvironments. The main advantages of microfluidics devices are reduced sample size which results in increased accuracy, (property of scaling law), reduced cost, very high throughput (parallelism) and fast analysis time.

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Bio-surfaces
Studying the biology of cells can be a difficult task due to a their inclination to drift during observation and interact with other undesired cells. By using femtosecond laser machining, polymer moulds can be created that act as paddoks, trapping cells in a fixed location to minimise drift and to ensure they only contact other cells or treatments specified by the researcher. These polymer cells and other surfaces allow efficient research of cell behaviour..
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Functional Polymers for Photovoltaic Devices
Laser patterned titanium electrodes are being investigated for use in photovoltaic devices where the advanced optical propertie may have the ability to enhance the efficincy of sunlight to electrical energy conversion. The patterning process, requiring a high energy femtosecond laser also enables new investigation of electrolyte flow and charge collection.

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Controlling cell functionality
This project is part of the Bio-manufacturing Consortium which involves researchers from the Australian Stem Cell Centre, CSIRO, Monash University and the CMP to development smart surfaces for controlling stem cells.

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