SBIR Phase I: Nanomaterial for Microchip Chemical Sensors

这个小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目将开发一种新型的微芯片化学分析仪，该分析仪采用了一种新的纳米材料，可以分离和检测少量化学品和生物化学品。 这将通过开发所需的化学和处理来实现，以用专有材料涂覆微通道（20 x 50微米），所述专有材料包含能够支持等离子体表面模式并产生表面增强拉曼（SER）光谱的银纳米颗粒。 初步研究表明，这种新的纳米材料将提供连续，可重复，定量，可逆和快速的化学分析，以万亿分之一的浓度在纳升的样品体积。 第一阶段将通过制备微芯片化学分析仪和测试其SER活性来证明可行性。测试将包括几种测试化学品（对氨基苯甲酸、苯乙炔等），药物（异戊巴比妥、巴比妥和苯巴比妥）和四种DNA碱基（腺嘌呤、胞嘧啶、鸟嘌呤和胸腺嘧啶）。该技术的商业市场应用包括生物技术（DNA测序、蛋白质分析）、医学（代谢物分析）和制药（高通量分子结构鉴定）。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a novel microchip chemical analyzer that incorporates a new nanomaterial that performs both separation and detection of small quantities of chemicals and biochemicals. This will be accomplished by developing the required chemistry and processing to coat microchannels (20 x 50 microns) with a proprietary material that contains silver nanoparticles capable of supporting plasmon surface modes and generating surface-enhanced Raman (SER) spectra. Preliminary studies suggest this new nanomaterial will provide continuous, reproducible, quantitative, reversible, and rapid chemical analysis to part per trillion concentrations in nanoliter sample volumes. Phase I will prove feasibility by preparing microchip chemical analyzers and testing their SER-activity. Testing will include several test chemicals (p-aminobenzoic acid, phenyl acetylene, etc.), pharmaceuticals (amobarbital, barbital, and phenylbarbital), and the four DNA bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine). The commercial market applications for this technology include biotechnology (DNA sequencing, protein analysis), medicine (metabolite analysis), and pharmaceutical (high-throughput molecular structure identification).