I-Corps: Software to enable use of robotic liquid handlers to produce synthetic polymers

这个I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于聚合物科学的进步是许多技术的驱动力。获得具有定制材料特性的先进聚合物的机会仍然限于能够雇用内部化学家团队的大型公司。相比之下，小公司和研究团体通常缺乏资源，无法拥有专门的化学工作人员，这限制了他们开发和获取对其技术和研究至关重要的有用材料的能力。虽然这些集团可以尝试从市场上采购先进的聚合物，但他们的选择仍然有限，因为按需定制聚合物合成仍然过于昂贵或劳动密集型，公司无法采用。Plexymer团队希望使用自动化聚合物合成技术来弥合这一差距，使较小的公司和研究小组能够获得先进的聚合物材料，增强和加快他们开发未来技术的能力。这个I-Corps项目旨在解决合成和测试新聚合物材料所需的劳动密集型和昂贵的工作。聚合物由于其材料多样性和在从塑料和表面涂层到药物制剂的不同产品中的效用而在各种各样的行业中是常见的。虽然聚合物的潜在用途继续迅速扩大，但合成和分析测试仍然是艰苦的手动过程。为了满足定制聚合物合成的这一未满足的需求，该团队开发了软件来指导液体处理机器人平台进行在线聚合物化学和材料分析。到目前为止，原型的功效已经通过成功合成高质量的聚合物以及进行多步合成和化学改性程序来证明。利用这项技术，可以同时合成多达96种独特的聚合物材料，并将合成和人工所需的时间减少了80%。该团队正在与化学公司合作，以发现用于药物配方的新型聚合物。该奖项反映了NSF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 broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project lies in the fact that advances in polymer science are a driving force for many technologies. Access to advanced polymers with tailored material properties remains limited to larger companies who can employ teams of in-house chemists. In contrast, small companies and research groups commonly lack the resources to have dedicated chemistry staff, which restricts their ability to develop and access useful materials that are critical for their technology and research. While these groups can attempt to source advanced polymers from the market, their options remain limited as on-demand and custom polymer synthesis remains too costly or labor intensive for companies to adopt. Team Plexymer is looking to use automated polymer synthesis technology to bridge this gap and enable smaller companies and research groups to access advanced polymer materials, empowering and accelerating their ability to develop tomorrow’s technologies.This I-Corps project aims to combat the labor intensive and costly effort required to synthesize and test new polymeric materials. Polymers are commonplace in wide variety of industries due to their material diversity and utility in different products ranging from plastics and surface coatings to pharmaceutical formulations. While the potential uses of polymers continue to rapidly expand, synthesis and analytical testing remain painstaking, manual processes. To address this unmet need for custom polymer synthesis, the team has developed software to direct liquid handling robotic platforms that carry out on-line polymer chemistry and material analytics. So far, prototype efficacy has been demonstrated by successfully synthesizing high quality polymers as well as carrying out multi-step synthesis and chemical modification procedures. Utilizing this technology, batches of up to 96 unique polymer materials can be synthesized simultaneously and have reduced the time required for synthesis and labor by 80%. The team is collaborating with chemical companies to discover novel polymers for pharmaceutical formulations.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.