SBIR Phase I: A Universal Connector for High-Density Microfluidic Chip Interfaces

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响是通过引入新的标准化微流体芯片接口来推进芯片实验室和其他相关生命科学平台。该项目提出了一种新的接口，以推进微流控芯片在医疗和非医疗领域的应用和能力，包括大幅提高医生和医学研究人员准备和执行诊断测试的速度。该接口实现了设备的轻松互操作性，因为芯片可以自由切换，而硬件的结果保持不变。该项目的成功将为生物能源、医学诊断和药物治疗带来重大突破。该项目将在可重复使用的微图案表面上，通过使用新型接口和密封方法，开发尺寸更小、通道密度更高的芯片接口。虽然存在制造具有小得多的尺寸的微流体芯片的技术，具有更复杂的芯片上操作，并且成本降低，但目前的限制是将流体微芯片的微观世界与实验室的宏观世界连接起来的界面的尺寸。本文提出的工作可以使芯片具有16倍的样品通道密度，允许执行更复杂的诊断，从而大大减少准确诊断所需的样品体积。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 of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to advance the lab-on-a-chip and other related life science platforms by the introduction of a new standardized microfluidic chip interface. The proposed project advances a novel interface to advance the applications and capabilities of microfluidic chips in both medical and non-medical fields, including dramatically increasing the rate at which doctors and medical researchers can prepare and perform diagnostic tests. The interface enables easy interoperability of devices as the chips can be freely switched out while the result of the hardware remains the same. The success of this project could lead to great breakthroughs in bioenergy, medical diagnostics, and drug therapeutics.The proposed project undertakes the development of chip interfaces with reduced size and increased channel density by making use of novel interfacing and sealing methods, on a reusable micro-patterned surface. While the technology exists to fabricate microfluidic chips with much smaller dimensions, with more complex on-chip operations, and at a reduced cost, the current limitation is the size of the interfaces bridging the microscopic world of the fluid microchip with the macroscopic world of the laboratory. The work proposed herein could enable chips with 16x the density of sample channels, allowing for vastly more complex diagnostics to be performed and thereby vastly reducing the sample volume needed for accurate diagnostics.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.