Measuring mechanical properties at high-throughput using centrifugation

In the era of Big Data and Machine Learning, it is crucial to acquire and catalog enormous datasets of materials properties. Advances in combinatorial chemistry and synthetic biology have drastically increased the synthetic capability for large libraries of materials. However, high-throughput screening remains a challenge particularly for mechanical properties, as these assays often require custom or expensive equipment or do not reach sufficient throughput. In this work, we develop a high-throughput colorimetric screening method for adhesion using a common laboratory centrifuge, multiwell plates, and microparticles. The technique uses centrifugation to apply a homogeneous mechanical detachment force across individual formulations in a multiwell plate. We demonstrate our method using a model pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) polymer, and we develop a novel high-throughput sample deposition method to prepare films with uniform thickness in each well. After establishing quantitative agreement with a more standard one-at-a-time test method, we demonstrate the throughput of our method, which is limited only by the number of wells in the plates. Further studies explore this centrifugation concept for more general mechanical properties beyond adhesion.