ITR: Computational Infrastructure for Microfluidic Systems with Applications to Biotechnology

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The applications of microfluidic devices (which involve liquids moving in spaces measured in micrometers, i.e. millionths of a meter) are growing explosively. As a specific example, consider the development of microsystems for blood testing and screening. For consumers, one could envision devices available in drugstores that could perform genetic screening for conditions of concern to individuals. At a larger scale, use of such devices in blood banks could significantly reduce the time and blood lost in screening the 14 million pints of blood donated per year. Sample preparation is a critical bottleneck in the development of integrated miniature analytical systems, and it remains largely unaddressed. It is currently done outside the microsystem by mixing, shaking, and pipetting, because there are no effective integrated design method. Improved computational methods promise to allow integration and interconnection of microfluidics. This will have an effect analogous to automated methods for VLSI design on microelectronics; it will revolutionize the field.This project will develop a computational infrastructure for simulation and design of microfluidic systems involving non-Newtonian, micrometer/nanometer-scale flows dominated by surface-related phenomena. Computational tools and analytical tools will be developed and used to compare with theoretical and experimental results. The project emphasizes methods to deliver complex molecules to flow surfaces, to create surface reaction sites and to provide the components for molecular-scale mixing and dispensing. It will design, fabricate, and characterize both stationary and oscillating MEMS fluidic channels and surfaces to evaluate molecular-scale mixing, flow, delivery, and dispensing of complex biological fluids. The focus will be on surface dominated flow and reaction phenomena that can be scaled for delivery of single molecules to programmed reaction sites. Such surface-related phenomena should find broad application in making MEMS-based, "chip-scale" analytical instruments and "biochips". The computational tools required to analyze and design such devices are currently nonexistent. This project brings together a team of computer scientists, numerical analysts, fluid dynamicists, experimentalists, and microscale process theoreticians who will collaborate closely on creating those tools and using them.