SBIR Phase I: Surface Texturing for Inhibiting Bacterial Biofilm Formation (Machining Process and Machine Tool System Development)

SBIR 第一阶段：用于抑制细菌生物膜形成的表面纹理（加工工艺和机床系统开发）

• 批准号: 1046496
• 负责人: Andrew Honegger
• 金额: $ 15万
• 依托单位: Microlution Inc.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-01-01 至 2011-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1046496&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Surface; Texturing; Inhibiting

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will enable the manufacture of Sharklet patterns on metallic surfaces. A Sharklet pattern is an engineered micro-surface texture that mimics the texture of shark skin and inhibits bacterial biofilm growth without the use of anti-microbial agents. The Sharklet surface texture technology has been successfully produced in soft materials using photolithographic methods but its extension to metals-based applications has been inhibited by the absence of a suitable manufacturing process. This project will demonstrate feasibility of a micro-grooving process. The efficacy of the micro-grooving process will be proved by machining the Sharklet pattern in steel dies, thereby facilitating the transfer of the Sharklet pattern to metal surfaces for testing. The commercial potential of this project is a significant reduction in hospital-borne infections, the 4th leading cause of death in United States. The estimated market size of such patterned metallic surfaces in the healthcare sector alone is $8.6 billion. Additional markets benefiting from this technology include energy, marine (exceeding $450 million/year), and space exploration. In addition, the presence of a micro-grooving process capability at the micron size scale will enable high-performance cooling solutions for defense and electronics industries that are experiencing a strong need for making smaller and more tightly spaced channels in their cooling devices to significantly enhance their thermal performance. Additionally, many micro-machining centers are machining 3D channels with 50-100 micron channel widths for micro-fluidics research. The ability to make channels and grooves below or near 1 micron in width will enable cutting-edge micro-fluidics researchers to explore additional fundamental fluidics phenomena at 3D micro-/nano-scales at a reduced cost footprint, compared to using conventional (2D geometry-limited) and expensive MEMS-based etching processes.

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目将能够在金属表面制造鲨鱼图案。小鲨鱼图案是一种人造微表面纹理，它模仿鲨鱼皮肤的纹理，在不使用抗菌剂的情况下抑制细菌生物膜的生长。Sharklet表面织构技术已经成功地利用光刻方法在软材料中生产出来，但由于缺乏合适的制造工艺，其扩展到基于金属的应用受到了阻碍。该项目将演示微槽工艺的可行性。微槽工艺的有效性将通过在钢模中加工小鲨鱼图案来证明，从而促进小鲨鱼图案转移到金属表面进行测试。该项目的商业潜力是显著减少医院传播的感染，这是美国第四大死亡原因。仅在医疗保健领域，这种有图案的金属表面的市场规模估计就达到86亿美元。受益于这项技术的其他市场包括能源、海洋(每年超过4.5亿美元)和太空探索。此外，微米级微槽处理能力的存在将为国防和电子行业提供高性能的冷却解决方案，这些行业迫切需要在其冷却设备中制造更小、更紧密间隔的通道，以显著提高其热性能。此外，许多微加工中心正在加工通道宽度为50-100微米的3D通道，用于微流体研究。与使用传统(2D几何限制)和昂贵的基于MEMS的刻蚀工艺相比，能够制作宽度小于或接近1微米的沟槽和沟槽的能力将使尖端微流体学研究人员能够以更低的成本探索3D微米/纳米尺度的额外基本流体现象。