Electroporation Device

Professional Project
Project Overview
At Fikst I worked with an academic lab to improve a design for a novel electroporation device. An electroporation device (image top right), a device housing and a control board were all completed and delivered to allow our client to carry out their research.
My Contributions
I worked on the design and fabrication of the electroporation device and the device housing. The device needed precise spacing between ports in order to be compatible with a pipetting robot. We used a soft silicone top layer to allow compliance in the cases where fabrication or assembly created misalignments. The device contained layers of molded and machined parts that were ordered from vendors and assembled internally. After creating an assembly procedure I worked with a technician to fabricate 75 of these devices for our client to use in testing. I also developed a semi-automated inspection process using a vertex optical system. The device housing enabled the consumable device to be connected to our clients high voltage equipment making safety a primary concern. I used spring-pin connectors to ensure a complete circuit could not be made without a device present. I also designed the pass through PCBs for the device housing using KiCAD.
In this video you can see all the components of this project working as intended. The pipetting robot is delivering fluid to one row of the electroporation device which can be seen in more detail at the top of this page. The device is encapsulated in the device housing (white box) which protects the user by concealing the electrodes and connection points which carry dangerously high voltage (>5kV). The housing is then connected to the control board which can be seen on the left of this video (clear box). The control board uses high voltage relays to control when high voltage is applied and to which row of the device. The board also connected to the pipetting robot to precisely time when the high voltage electrode is powered. This is critical as applying high voltage when any port is not completely filled with liquid will cause an arc discharge which can damage the device and is dangerous to the user.