I-Corps: Acoustic tweezing elastometry

I-Corps项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力在于新型非接触式技术，可用于生物材料、聚合物液体和复杂流体的流变测试。当用于医疗保健行业时，这种声学镊子流变测量技术允许使用手指刺破而不是静脉穿刺收集的小血液样本来快速可靠地评估血液凝固。此外，用于血浆凝固分析的光光学测试可以与用于全血分析的粘弹性测试集成在声学镊子装置中。在美国和世界范围内，声学镊子技术可以显著提高数百万创伤、大手术和凝血障碍患者的护理质量。在石油工业中，该技术的潜在应用是可靠、准确地测量原油的流变和老化，这对制定最佳开采和运输策略至关重要。在化学和制药行业，该技术可用于制备具有所需性能的聚合物材料，以及小型无容器加工独特的聚合物材料，这些材料在与固体壁接触时不会产生杂质。I-Corps的这个项目进一步开发了一种非接触式声学镊子技术，在这种技术中，液体样品的一滴通过声辐射力悬浮在空气中，通过液滴形状的变化来测量其随时间的流变特性。通过使用实验室原型进行测试，该技术的关键颠覆性特征是由于非接触式测量而提高了可靠性和准确性，能够评估聚合和混凝等过程中流变特性的时间变化，样品量要求小，操作时间相对较短。该项目的目标是在医疗保健、石油、化学和制药行业开展重点客户发现工作，以评估声学镊子技术的商业潜力。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project lies in novel non-contact technology for rheological testing of biological materials, polymeric liquids, and complex fluids. When used in healthcare industry, this acoustic tweezing rheometry technology allows for fast and reliable assessment of blood coagulation using small blood samples collected by a finger prick instead of venipuncture. Additionally, photo-optical tests used in plasma coagulation assays can be integrated in the acoustic tweezing device with viscoelastic tests used in whole blood analysis. The acoustic tweezing technology can dramatically improve the quality of care for millions of trauma, major surgery and coagulation disorders patients in the United States and worldwide. When used in petroleum industry, the potential application of the technology is reliable and accurate measurement of rheology and aging of crude oils, which is important for formulating optimal strategies for their extraction and transportation. In chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the technology could be very useful for preparation of polymer materials with required properties and small-scale containerless processing of unique polymer materials that lack impurities generated during polymer contact with solid walls.This I-Corps project further develops a non-contact acoustic tweezing technology in which a drop of a fluid sample is levitated in air by acoustic radiation forces and its time-dependent rheological properties are measured from drop shape changes. Key disruptive features of this technology, tested using the laboratory prototype, are the increased reliability and accuracy due to non-contact measurement, the ability to assess temporal changes in rheological properties during processes such as polymerization and coagulation, small sample volume requirement and relatively short procedure time. The goal of this project is to do focused customer discovery work in the healthcare, petroleum, chemical and pharmaceutical industries to evaluate the commercial potential of the acoustic tweezing technology.