Design and fabrication of a standard to align multicolour TIRF microscopes.

拟议的项目是罗切洛实验室和光谱应用研究公司(“光谱”)之间的合作努力。SPECTRUM是一家总部位于安大略省里士满山庄的生物技术公司，旨在为光学和光机械挑战找到创新而实用的解决方案，从而为科学、工业和商业市场(http://www.spectral.ca/home).)产生杰出价值他们专门从事定制光学仪器的研究和开发。SPECTRUM需要一种简单的“现场”方法来量化全内反射荧光(TIRF)显微镜的性能。更具体地说，他们需要一张标准的幻灯片来精确测量多种颜色的逝去光场穿透深度。他们认为，具有图案化的纳米级高通道/特征(即填充了比消失场更短的染料的通道)的载玻片可以作为标准载玻片；然而，他们缺乏投资的资源 直接在这种方法中。Rocheleau博士在微流控设备设计和定量荧光显微镜方面拥有独特的专业知识。这种结合的专业知识将使罗切洛实验室与Spectral公司的科学家合作，制造和测试新的标准幻灯片。Rocheleau实验室可以获得制造(Microfluidics Foundry)和测试(TIRF显微镜)设计所需的资源。SPECTRUM无法获得这些资源，为这样一个短期项目开发这些资源的成本将高得令人望而却步。这一建议需要纳米压印微流体通道来图案化不同高度的通道，从而在该领域提供容易的标准化。

The proposed project is a collaborative effort between the Rocheleau lab and Spectral Applied Research Inc. ("Spectral"). Spectral is a biotechnology company based in Richmond Hill Ontario that aims to find innovative yet practical solutions to optical and opto-mechanical challenges, thereby producing outstanding value for the scientific, industrial and commercial market place (http://www.spectral.ca/home). They specialize in the research and development of custom optical instrumentation. Spectral requires a simple "in-the-field" method to quantify the performance of Total Internal Refection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscopes. More specifically, they need a standard slide to accurately measure the evanescent field penetration depth in multiple colours. They believe a slide with patterned nanoscale tall channels/features (i.e. channels filled with dye that are shorter than the evanescent field) could act as this standard slide; however, they lack the resources to invest directly in this approach. Dr. Rocheleau has unique expertise in microfluidic device design and quantitative fluorescence microscopy. This combined expertise will allow the Rocheleau lab in collaboration with Spectral staff scientists to fabricate and test the new standard slide. The Rocheleau lab has access to the resources needed to fabricate (Microfluidics Foundry) and test (TIRF microscopes) their designs. Spectral does not have access to these resources and it would be prohibitively expensive to develop them for such a short-term project. This proposal entails nanoimprinting microfluidic channels to pattern channels of varying height and thus provide easy standardization in the field.