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，预计需要具有成本效益的制造和实际部署，采取广泛的综合战略，在材料科学，工程，生物学，化学和电子学的界面上寻求突破，以开发下一代loc。研究和设计周期早期的这些考虑是将技术从学术实验室过渡到制造业的关键。预期更广泛的影响包括竞争性的招聘机制和吸引优秀学生和博士后的跨学科合作研究机会，包括代表性不足的群体和退伍军人。知识传播包括出版物、发明披露和专利。为微流体开发和/或适应的可扩展原型工艺也将提供给学术界和工业界，包括成熟的公司和企业家，其目标是显着减少学习曲线并简化从想法到产品的过程。该中心将有助于促进新知识和竞争前研究成果的产生，以实现基于微流体技术的发展，使行业能够解决紧迫的社会需求。该中心的目标是开发集成和制造芯片实验室（loc）的技术，以方便诊断人类健康、农业和环境。实现这一目标的策略集中在配备微流体组件的批量生产诊断设备上，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-能够在小型化体积（ul - pl）中进行化学分析。少数可用的商业微流体系统价格昂贵（成本高达数十万美元），并且没有有效的采样和分析能力。目前尚不存在的是大规模生产，具有成本效益的LOC平台，该平台集成组件以执行多种微流体/诊断功能，并通过标准通信设备报告结果。主要障碍是缺乏能够处理实际样品的集成和可制造的loc。需要在两个相关方面进行创新：(a)采用和/或修改现有的可扩展工艺来制造微流体装置，以及(b)设计自主的、可现场部署的、适合大规模生产的loc。通过与工业成员公司密切合作，CADMIM将在微流体技术商业化方面取得重大进展，从而开发新产品，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。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.