Phase II IUCRC at University of Illinois at Chicago: Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM)

集成微流体先进设计和制造中心(CADMIM)开发集成和制造芯片实验室(LOC)的技术，以便于对人类健康、农业和环境进行诊断。CADMIM强调以设计为导向的研究，预测成本效益制造和实际部署的需求，采取广泛的综合战略，在材料科学、工程、生物、化学和电子技术的接口上寻求在下一代LOC开发中的突破。在研究和设计周期的早期，这些考虑因素是将技术从学术实验室过渡到制造业的关键。预期的更广泛影响包括竞争性招聘机制和有吸引力的跨学科协作研究机会，以吸引优秀学生和博士后，包括代表性不足群体的成员和退伍军人。知识传播包括出版物、发明披露和专利。还将向学术界和工业界，包括老牌公司和企业家，提供为微流控开发和/或改装的可扩展原型工艺，目的是大幅缩短学习曲线，并简化从想法到产品的过程。该中心将帮助促进新知识的产生和竞争前的研究成果，以支持基于微流体的技术的开发，使行业能够满足紧迫的社会需求。该中心的目标是开发集成和制造芯片上实验室(LOC)的技术，以便于对人类健康、农业和环境进行诊断。实现这一目标的战略以大规模生产的诊断设备为中心，这些设备配备了微流控部件，具有高灵敏度(NM-PM)和短分析时间(30分钟)的芯片大小的设备--能够以小型化体积(ul-pl)进行化学分析。为数不多的商用微流控系统价格昂贵(成本高达数十万美元)，而且没有有效的采样和分析能力。目前尚不存在的是批量生产的、成本效益高的LOC平台，这些平台集成组件以执行多种微流控/诊断功能，并通过标准通信设备报告结果。一个主要的障碍是缺乏能够整合和可制造的能够处理真实世界样本的LOC。需要在两个相关的方面进行创新：(A)利用和/或修改现有的可扩展工艺制造微流控设备，以及(B)设计自主、现场可部署和适合大规模生产的LOC。通过与工业成员公司的密切合作，CADMIM将在微流控技术商业化方面取得重大进展，带来新产品，在现有公司内创建新公司和/或新部门，创造新的就业机会，以及其他切实的商业和社会影响。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Center for Advanced Design and Manufacturing of Integrated Microfluidics (CADMIM) develops technologies for integrating and manufacturing labs-on-a-chip (LOCs) for easy diagnosis of the human health, agriculture, and the environment. CADMIM emphasizes design-oriented research that anticipates the need for cost-effective manufacture and practical deployment, taking a broad integrated strategy that seeks breakthroughs at the interfaces of material science, engineering, biology, chemistry, and electronics in the development of next generation LOCs. These considerations early in the research and design cycle are key to transitioning technologies out of academic laboratories and into the manufacturing sector. Expected broader impacts include competitive recruitment mechanisms and attractive cross-disciplinary collaborative research opportunities to engage excellent students and post-docs, including members of underrepresented groups and veterans. Knowledge dissemination includes publications, invention disclosures, and patents. Scalable prototyping processes developed and/or adapted for microfluidics will also be made available to academia and industry, including established companies and entrepreneurs, with a goal to dramatically reduce the learning curve and streamline the idea-to-product process. This center will help catalyze the generation of new knowledge and pre-competitive research results to enable the development of microfluidics based technologies to enable industry to address pressing societal needs. The goal of this center is to develop technologies for integrating and manufacturing labs-on-a-chip (LOCs) for easy diagnosis of the human health, agriculture, and the environment. The strategy for meeting this goal centers on mass-produced diagnostic devices equipped with microfluidic components, chip-sized devices with high sensitivities (nM - pM) and short assay times ( 30 min) -- capable of chemical analyses in miniaturized volumes (ul - pl). The few available commercial microfluidic systems are expensive (costing up to hundreds of thousand dollars) and do not have effective sampling and analysis capability. What does not yet exist are mass-produced, cost-effective LOC platforms that integrate components to carry out multiple microfluidic/diagnostic functions and report results via a standard communications device. A primary obstacle is the lack of integration-enabling and manufacturable LOCs capable of processing real-world samples. Innovation is needed on two related fronts: (a) employing and/or modifying existing scalable processes make microfluidic devices, and (b) designing LOCs that are autonomous, field deployable, and amenable to mass production. By working closely with industrial member companies, CADMIM will make significant strides towards commercialization of microfluidic technology, leading to new products, the creation of new companies and/or new divisions within existing firms, new jobs, and other tangible commercial and societal impacts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.