We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

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October 10, 2013

Speaker: Jesse Greener, Laval University

Title: Microfluidics and Spectral Imaging for the Study of Flow-Templated Biomaterials

Abstract: Microfluidic (MF) technology is finding new opportunities in biomaterial synthesises due to exceptional control of reaction variables, control over mixing, reduction of material consumption, and isolation of the growth environment from ambient conditions. The use of MFs for studies of biomaterials is very attractive due to the ability to precisely control the wall shear stress, temperature and chemical gradients. Generally, in situ imaging of biofilms and other biomaterials is accomplished by 2D or confocal microscopy techniques. However, the rapid pace of MF-based material development has placed strong demands on in situ characterization. To this end, there has been an increasing push for new spectral imaging methods that can simultaneously report on a broad range of chemical properties without the need of additional foreign probe molecules. In this talk, a microfluidic bioreactor with an easy to fabricate nano-plasmonic surface is demonstrated for studies of biofilms and their precursor materials via surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). The system uses a novel design to induce sheath flow confinement of a sodium citrate biofilm precursor stream against the SERS imaging surface to measure spatial variations in the concentration profile. The unoptimised SERS enhancement was approximately 2.5 x 104, thereby improving data acquisition time, enabling reduced laser power requirements and enabling a citrate detection limit of 0.1mM, well below the concentrations used in biofilm nutrient solutions. The flow confinement was observed by both optical microscopy and SERS imaging with good complementarity. We demonstrate the new bioreactor by growing flow-templated biofilms on the microchannel wall. This work opens the way for in situ spectral imaging of biofilms and their biochemical environment under dynamic flow conditions.