I-Corps: Acoustic tweezing elastometry

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于用于生物材料、聚合物液体和复杂流体的流变测试的新型非接触技术。当用于医疗保健行业时，这种声学镊子流变技术可以使用通过手指针刺而不是静脉穿刺收集的少量血液样本快速可靠地评估血液凝固。此外，血浆凝固测定中使用的光-光测试可以与全血分析中使用的粘弹性测试集成在声学镊子装置中。 声学镊子技术可以显著提高美国和全球数百万创伤、大手术和凝血障碍患者的护理质量。 当用于石油工业时，该技术的潜在应用是可靠和准确地测量原油的流变性和老化，这对于制定其提取和运输的最佳策略非常重要。在化学和制药行业，该技术可用于制备具有所需性能的聚合物材料和小规模无容器加工独特的聚合物材料，这些聚合物材料在聚合物与固体壁接触期间没有产生杂质。I-Corps项目进一步开发了一种非接触式声学镊子技术，其中一滴流体样品通过声辐射力悬浮在空气中，其时间-从液滴形状变化测量依赖的流变性能。使用实验室原型进行测试，该技术的关键突破性特征是由于非接触式测量而提高的可靠性和准确性，能够评估聚合和凝固等过程中流变特性的时间变化，小样品体积要求和相对较短的程序时间。 该项目的目标是在医疗保健、石油、化工和制药行业开展重点客户发现工作，以评估声学镊子技术的商业潜力。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project lies in novel non-contact technology for rheological testing of biological materials, polymeric liquids, and complex fluids. When used in healthcare industry, this acoustic tweezing rheometry technology allows for fast and reliable assessment of blood coagulation using small blood samples collected by a finger prick instead of venipuncture. Additionally, photo-optical tests used in plasma coagulation assays can be integrated in the acoustic tweezing device with viscoelastic tests used in whole blood analysis. The acoustic tweezing technology can dramatically improve the quality of care for millions of trauma, major surgery and coagulation disorders patients in the United States and worldwide. When used in petroleum industry, the potential application of the technology is reliable and accurate measurement of rheology and aging of crude oils, which is important for formulating optimal strategies for their extraction and transportation. In chemical and pharmaceutical industries, the technology could be very useful for preparation of polymer materials with required properties and small-scale containerless processing of unique polymer materials that lack impurities generated during polymer contact with solid walls.This I-Corps project further develops a non-contact acoustic tweezing technology in which a drop of a fluid sample is levitated in air by acoustic radiation forces and its time-dependent rheological properties are measured from drop shape changes. Key disruptive features of this technology, tested using the laboratory prototype, are the increased reliability and accuracy due to non-contact measurement, the ability to assess temporal changes in rheological properties during processes such as polymerization and coagulation, small sample volume requirement and relatively short procedure time. The goal of this project is to do focused customer discovery work in the healthcare, petroleum, chemical and pharmaceutical industries to evaluate the commercial potential of the acoustic tweezing technology.