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

该小企业创新研究 (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控芯片接口来推进芯片实验室和其他相关生命科学平台。拟议的项目提出了一种新颖的接口，以推进微流控芯片在医疗和非医疗领域的应用和功能，包括显着提高医生和医学研究人员准备和执行诊断测试的速度。该接口使设备之间能够轻松互操作，因为芯片可以自由切换，而硬件结果保持不变。该项目的成功可能会在生物能源、医学诊断和药物治疗领域带来巨大突破。该项目通过在可重复使用的微图案表面上利用新颖的接口和密封方法，开发尺寸减小并增加通道密度的芯片接口。虽然现有技术可以制造尺寸小得多、片上操作更复杂、成本更低的微流体芯片，但目前的限制是连接流体微芯片的微观世界与实验室的宏观世界的接口的尺寸。本文提出的工作可以使芯片的样本通道密度提高 16 倍，从而可以执行更加复杂的诊断，从而大大减少准确诊断所需的样本量。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优点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.