I-Corps: Software to enable use of robotic liquid handlers to produce synthetic polymers

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力在于，聚合物科学的进步是许多技术的推动力。获得具有定制材料性能的先进聚合物的机会仍然仅限于可以雇佣内部化学家团队的较大公司。相比之下，小公司和研究集团通常缺乏资源，无法配备专门的化学工作人员，这限制了他们开发和获取对其技术和研究至关重要的有用材料的能力。虽然这些集团可以尝试从市场上采购先进的聚合物，但他们的选择仍然有限，因为按需和定制的聚合物合成对于公司来说仍然过于昂贵或劳动密集型。Team Plexmer希望使用自动聚合物合成技术来弥合这一差距，使较小的公司和研究小组能够获得先进的聚合物材料，增强并加快他们开发未来技术的能力。这个i-Corps项目旨在对抗合成和测试新聚合物材料所需的劳动密集型和昂贵的工作。聚合物因其材料的多样性和在从塑料、表面涂料到药物配方等不同产品中的用途而在各种行业中司空见惯。虽然聚合物的潜在用途继续迅速扩大，但合成和分析测试仍然是艰苦的手工过程。为了解决定制聚合物合成这一未得到满足的需求，该团队开发了软件来指导执行在线聚合物化学和材料分析的液体处理机器人平台。到目前为止，原型的功效已经通过成功地合成高质量的聚合物以及进行多步合成和化学修饰过程来展示。利用这项技术，可以同时合成多达96种独特的聚合物材料，并将合成和人工所需的时间减少80%。该团队正在与化学公司合作，为药物配方发现新型聚合物。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project lies in the fact that advances in polymer science are a driving force for many technologies. Access to advanced polymers with tailored material properties remains limited to larger companies who can employ teams of in-house chemists. In contrast, small companies and research groups commonly lack the resources to have dedicated chemistry staff, which restricts their ability to develop and access useful materials that are critical for their technology and research. While these groups can attempt to source advanced polymers from the market, their options remain limited as on-demand and custom polymer synthesis remains too costly or labor intensive for companies to adopt. Team Plexymer is looking to use automated polymer synthesis technology to bridge this gap and enable smaller companies and research groups to access advanced polymer materials, empowering and accelerating their ability to develop tomorrow’s technologies.This I-Corps project aims to combat the labor intensive and costly effort required to synthesize and test new polymeric materials. Polymers are commonplace in wide variety of industries due to their material diversity and utility in different products ranging from plastics and surface coatings to pharmaceutical formulations. While the potential uses of polymers continue to rapidly expand, synthesis and analytical testing remain painstaking, manual processes. To address this unmet need for custom polymer synthesis, the team has developed software to direct liquid handling robotic platforms that carry out on-line polymer chemistry and material analytics. So far, prototype efficacy has been demonstrated by successfully synthesizing high quality polymers as well as carrying out multi-step synthesis and chemical modification procedures. Utilizing this technology, batches of up to 96 unique polymer materials can be synthesized simultaneously and have reduced the time required for synthesis and labor by 80%. The team is collaborating with chemical companies to discover novel polymers for pharmaceutical formulations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.