SBIR Phase I: Total Holographic Characterization of Colloids Through Holographic Video Microscopy

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将支持开发一种基于全息视频显微镜的新方法，以分析胶体分散体的物理性质。这项技术将立即在制药、化妆品、个人护理产品、石化和食品等行业中得到应用，所有这些行业都依赖于胶体分散体的性质和组成它们的微观颗粒。2012年，全球颗粒表征市场的年销售额超过50亿美元。目前的全息表征技术通过提供有关分散中单个颗粒的大小和组成的同时信息，并通过在不依赖模型或假设的情况下建立样品内性质分布的清晰图像，扩展了颗粒表征的最先进技术。获取这些新维度的信息将有助于依赖胶体材料特性的所有工业部门的产品开发、过程控制和质量保证，从而增加创新机会、提高产品性能和降低制造成本。除了抢占现有的颗粒表征市场份额外，这一新产品还可能通过创造新的应用领域来拓宽市场。该项目的智力优势在于将全息视频显微镜从学术研究工具转变为强大的商业工具。要使这项革命性的技术在商业上可行，需要几项创新。在其目前的化身中，已经展示了近乎理想的球体的全息表征，其大小可以达到一纳米以内，复折射率可以达到千分之一以内，时间分辨轨迹可以在三维中达到一纳米以内。没有其他粒子表征技术能提供如此丰富的粒子分辨信息。这项第一阶段的工作将通过应用最先进的机器学习方法来扩展技术的适用范围，同时将每次分析的时间从几秒减少到几十毫秒，从而证明对一系列非理想工业材料进行全息颗粒表征的可行性。这种100倍的加速，以及相关计算成本的降低，将使该技术能够部署在大容量和高吞吐量的应用程序中。由此产生的对胶体分散体成分的实时洞察将通过识别和帮助纠正工艺偏差和故障来提高制造效率。通过这样做，它将降低所有开发和销售胶体材料的工业部门的产品成本。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will support the development of a novel approach, based on holographic video microscopy, to analyze the physical properties of colloidal dispersions. This technology will have immediate applications in industries as diverse as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, personal care products, petrochemicals and food, all of which rely on the properties of colloidal dispersions and the microscopic particles from which they are composed. The worldwide market for particle characterization exceeded $5 billion per year in 2012. The present effort's holographic characterization technology extends the state-of-the-art in particle characterization by providing simultaneous information about both the size and the composition of individual particles in dispersion, and by building up a clear picture of the distribution of properties within a sample without relying on models or assumptions. Access to these new dimensions of information will be useful for product development, process control and quality assurance in all of the industrial sectors that rely on the properties of colloidal materials, thereby increasing opportunities for innovation, enhancing product performance, and decreasing manufacturing costs. In addition to capturing a share of the established market for particle characterization, this new product may also broaden the market by creating new application areas.The intellectual merit of this project resides in transforming holographic video microscopy from an academic research tool to a powerful commercial instrument. Several innovations are required to make this revolutionary technology commercially viable. In its present incarnation, holographic characterization has been demonstrated with nearly ideal spheres, for which it yields the size to within a nanometer, the complex refractive index to within a part per thousand, and the time-resolved trajectory to within a nanometer in three dimensions. No other particle characterization technique offers such a wealth of particle-resolved information. This Phase I effort will demonstrate the feasibility of holographic particle characterization for a range of non-ideal industrial materials by applying state-of-the-art methods of machine learning to extend the technique's domain of applicability while simultaneously reducing the time per analysis from seconds to tens of milliseconds. This 100-fold acceleration, and the associated reduction in computational cost, will enable the technology to be deployed in large-volume and high-throughput applications. The resulting real-time insights into colloidal dispersions' compositions will improve manufacturing efficiency by identifying and helping to correct process deviations and failures. In so doing it will reduce product costs in all of the industrial sectors that develop and sell colloidal materials.