Point-of-care plasmonic-photonic multifunction device

本申请是第二阶段的合作研究与开发（CRD）项目，作为先前资助的为期一年的第一阶段CRD项目“床旁护理光纤多功能平台”的直接延续，该项目计划于2015年秋季结束。I期CRD导致开发了一种概念验证设备，用于对生物样本中的基因突变或感染因子进行即时分子诊断检测。虽然Spartan内部研发团队建立在拟议设计的基础上，并为未来的商业化优化了设备，但我们在这个后续CRD项目中的任务是充分探索各种替代设计，这些设计被认为是原型，但由于时间不够而没有进行。 第二阶段CRD将主要侧重于开发第二版设备，以解决可靠性、生产和操作成本以及灵敏度等一些潜在的关键问题。因此，我们的努力将旨在a）开发可靠的等离子体涂层，用于使用近红外光有效且均匀地加热采样体积，以及B）最大化可见光外耦合和荧光激发，以及c）增强。我们还将研究d）探索光传输的其他含义，如多模和无光栅光纤。第一个预原型设备基于TFBG，代表了监控过程的控制和准确性方面的最佳技术解决方案。然而，该技术所提供的能力是相当“矫枉过正”的，并且该平台与当前可用系统的大规模生产和集成可能会导致技术上更苛刻的产品，这将需要更熟练的操作员，因此对最终用户来说将更昂贵。 因此，拟议的第二阶段CRD将包括与基于TFBG的原始平台并行的实验，以及新的廉价且不太严格但可能在商业上更有前途的设计。

This application is for a phase II Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) project as a direct continuation of the previously funded one-year long phase I CRD project "Point-of-care fiber optic multifunction platform" that is scheduled to end in the fall of 2015. The phase I CRD resulted in a development of a proof-of-concept device for point of care molecular diagnostic testing of genetic mutations or infectious agents in bio-samples. While the Spartan internal R&D team builds upon the proposed design and optimize the device for future commercialization, our task in this follow-up CRD project is to explore fully a variety of alternative designs that were considered for the prototype but not pursued for lack of time. The phase II CRD will focus primarily on developing a version 2 device to address some potentially critical issues of reliability, cost of production and operation, and sensitivity. As such, our efforts will be aimed at a) developing a reliable plasmonic coating for efficient and uniform heating of the sampling volume using the near-infrared light as well as b) maximizing the visible light out-coupling and fluorescence excitation and c) enhancement. We will also look into d) exploring alternative meanings of light delivery such as multimode and grating-less fibers. The first pre-prototype device was based on TFBG and represents the best technical solution in terms of control and accuracy in monitoring the processes. However capabilities provided by the technology are rather an "overkill" and mass production and integration of this platform with currently available systems would likely result in a technically more demanding product, that would require more skilled operators and would therefore be more expensive to the final user. As such, the proposed phase II CRD will include experiments with the original TFBG based platform in parallel with new inexpensive and less rigorous but potentially commercially more promising designs.