High Throughput Microfluidics

微流体是一个研究领域，它寻求将通常在完整的生物或化学实验室中完成的合成和分析任务缩小到一个“芯片”上，类似于电子学如何将过去占据一个房间的计算机缩小到一个芯片上。微流体，也被称为芯片实验室，在过去的几十年里取得了许多进步，显示出在非常小的流体体积下工作的优势，例如低试剂使用量，高度控制和均匀的反应条件。然而，这些进步对工业，特别是化学合成的影响很小，因为这些系统的吞吐量在ml/hr的数量级。***这个拟议的研究项目旨在利用微滴的优点和新特性，并将其转移到每小时可生产数十升的高通量系统中，并使其具有工业意义。提出的研究计划将调查并行化的路径，有时被称为缩放，以增加微流体系统的吞吐量。这涉及到制造许多共享相同输入的设备。为了达到制造这些管道所需的精度，这些管道大约是人类头发大小，将使用与生产计算机芯片相同的微制造技术。微加工在创建高度并行化的电气系统方面有着良好的记录，也将是构建高度并行化微流体的关键。***微流控合成使用更少的能源和更少的化学资源来生产更高质量的化学品，但只有在低体积。通过研究高度并行化的微流体，该研究计划将使微流体合成达到工业相关的产量，并改善化学合成。* * * * *

Microfluidics is an area of research that seeks to take synthesis and analysis tasks normally done in a full biology or chemistry lab and shrink them down onto a "chip", similarly to how electronics took computers that used to fill a room and shrunk them down onto a single chip. Microfluidics, also called Lab-on-a-Chip, has seen many advancements in the last couple of decades showing the advantages of working with very small fluid volumes, such as low reagent usage, and highly controlled and uniform reaction conditions. However, the promised impact of these advancements on industry, especially in chemical synthesis, has been minimal because the throughput of these systems is in the order of ml/hr.***This proposed research program seeks to take the advantages and novel properties of microdroplets and move them into high-throughput systems that can produce tens of litres per hour and make them industrially relevant. The proposed research program will investigate the path of parallelization, sometimes called scaling out, to increase the throughput of microfluidic systems. This involves fabricating many devices that all share the same inputs. In-order to achieve the accuracy required in fabricating these channels, which are pipes that are about the size of a human hair, the same techniques of microfabrication used to produce computer chips will be used. Microfabrication has a proven track record of creating highly parallelized electrical systems and will also be key in building highly parallelized microfluidics.***Microfluidic synthesis uses less energy and fewer chemical resources to produce higher quality chemicals, but only at low volumes. Through investigating highly-parallelized microfluidics this research program will bring microfluidic synthesis up to industrially relevant production volumes and improve chemical synthesis.*** **