MRI: Acquisition of Equipment to Construct Microfluidic Instruments for use In Chemistry, Biology, and Materials Science

这项来自主要研究仪器的奖项支持布兰迪斯大学购买半导体制造设备，以开发微流体装置。这些设备通常由一平方英寸的塑料构成，其中包含微观管道，用于精确计量、混合和储存微量液体。化学、生物学和材料科学研究的瓶颈通常是兴趣样本的有限可用性，无论是新药、蛋白质还是合成材料。微流体装置是一种将目前实验室处理的液体体积减少一千倍的方法。由于这些设备是使用半导体技术制造的，通过将晶体管从大型真空管转换为微型半导体来实现规模经济，现在正在通过使用微流体来使管道小型化来实现流体处理技术。微流控技术与半导体技术的结合，导致了商业化“芯片实验室”仪器的诞生，并改变了化学和生物学的实验室实践。作为该技术应用的一个例子，该设备的主要用户之一将制造用于蛋白质结晶的微流体装置。为了推断蛋白质的结构，需要蛋白质晶体，这对于理解蛋白质的功能以及为治疗目的设计的药物非常重要。蛋白质结晶的过程需要在许多不同的溶剂条件下进行试验，而微流体的使用将使产量增加一千倍。这项来自主要研究仪器的奖项支持布兰迪斯大学购买半导体制造设备，以开发微流体装置。这些微流体仪器由弹性体聚合物组成，其高度和宽度为数十到数百微米。不同的微流体组件被设计，制造，并组合成一个单一的仪器（芯片上的实验室），以精确地测量，混合，并存储亚纳升的样品，溶剂和其他试剂。上述设备套件将提供为每种应用定制的设计，制造和操作微流体仪器的能力。例如，该设备的主要用户之一将制造用于蛋白质结晶的微流控装置，其中需要快速处理许多不同的溶剂条件，同时消耗尽可能少的蛋白质，这为开发微流控装置提供了动力。另一个用户将利用微流控设备研究胶体液晶的相变动力学，在高分辨率光学显微镜下快速混合试剂的要求驱动了对微流控设备的需求，而第三个研究者将研究发生化学反应的液滴之间的耦合，其中微流控设备的使用可以精确控制液滴的大小和空间结构。

This award from the Major Research Instrumentation supports Brandeis University with the acquisition of a semi-conductor manufacturing equipment to enable the development of microfluidic devices. These are devices, typically constructed of a square inch of plastic, that contain microscopic plumbing designed to precisely meter, mix, and store minute amounts of fluids. A bottleneck in research in chemistry, biology, and materials science is often the limited availability of the sample of interest, whether it be a new drug, protein, or synthetic material. Microfluidic devices are a way of reducing a thousand fold the volumes of liquids handled in current laboratories. Because these devices are manufactured using semiconductor technology the economies of scale realized by converting transistors from large vacuum tubes to microscopic semiconductors are now being achieved in fluid handling technologies through the use of microfluidics to miniaturize plumbing. The integration of microfluidics with semiconductor technology is leading to the creation of commercial "lab-on-a-chip" instruments and the transformation of laboratory practices in chemistry and biology. As an example of an application of this technology, one of the principal users of this equipment will manufacture microfluidic devices for protein crystallization. Protein crystals are needed in order to deduce the protein's structure, which is important in understanding the function of proteins, as well as the drugs designed for therapeutic purposes. The process of protein crystallization requires the trial of many different solvent conditions and the use of microfluidics will permit a thousand fold increase in throughput.This award from the Major Research Instrumentation supports Brandeis University with the acquisition of a semi-conductor manufacturing equipment to enable the development of microfluidic devices . These microfluidic instruments consist of an elastomeric polymer through which run channels of tens to hundreds of microns in height and width. Different microfluidic components are designed, fabricated, and combined into a single instrument (lab-on-a-chip) to precisely meter, mix, and store sub-nanoliter amounts of sample, solvent, and other reagents. The suite of equipment described above will provide the capability to design, manufacture, and operate microfluidic instruments that are customized for each application. For example, one of the principal users of this equipment will manufacture microfluidic devices for protein crystallization, where the need to process many different solvent conditions rapidly while consuming as little as possible of the protein provides the motivation to develop microfluidic devices. Another user will utilize microfluidic devices to study the kinetics of phase transitions in colloidal liquid crystals, where the requirement to rapidly mix reagents in a high resolution optical microscope drives the need for microfluidic devices, while a third investigator will study coupling between drops undergoing chemical reactions, where employment of microfluidic devices allows precise control of both the drop size and spatial configuration of the drops.