SBIR-STTR Award

This SBIR Phase I project will reduce health costs and increase accessibility to diagnostics by reducing the cost of manufacture, and increasing manufacturing volume of superior quality microfluidic devices. The proposal seeks to develop a platform technology that produces the same manufacturing benefits as rapid prototyping and rapid manufacturing, though the resolution and surface finish will be optical grade on the micro scale. This may enable a variety of things including less expensive drug making, to faster disease diagnosis, to health benefits to the third world, to eliminating the backlog of rape-kits awaiting analysis. The end results - the lowering of medical expenses, faster diagnosis of disease, a boost in research, lowered pharmaceutical costs - are likely to be broadly beneficial. The technical innovation is a leap forward in the conceptual basis of Small Form Factor designs. The novelty of the idea opens and enables new research areas in engineering and chemical disciplines. The project will address manufacture of very low cost (~1/10th the current market price) capillary electrophoresis (CE) chips by developing a platform technology for fast prototyping microfluidic chip layouts. The technology allows the formation of a three dimensional ?shell? of micron sized scale parts. The research will take a two-pronged approach: developing an improved understanding of interactions of the prototyping components and combining it with experimental development of a prototype ?T-shaped? CE chip. The theoretical aspect of the microfluidic molding, which has been demonstrated by a laboratory proof-of-concept experiment, will focus on understanding the feasible operating range and defining the performance limitations of the system. The experimental aspect will be dedicated to manipulation of the system to reveal the configuration required for the ?T-shaped? CE chip.

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in developing a novel method of manufacturing micro sized parts in three-dimensions without layers at high volume. With no parting lines, the technology represents a significant advancement over current state of the art molding and 3D technologies for certain applications. As this represents an entirely new field of research, not merely an extension of solid freeform fabrication (SFF) techniques, it opens and enables wide research areas in engineering and chemical disciplines. More imminent is using the technology to create capillary electrophoresis (CE) chips that vastly reduce the amount of reagents, provide previously unattainable properties, and at a significantly lower price. By doing so, the technology will accelerate and broaden the adoption of microfluidics which are currently used in applications such as forensics, genomics, drug making, drug analysis, clinical diagnostics, biosensors, and environmental testing, among countless others. This project automates and expands a novel platform technology to manufacture high resolution micro parts. The technology is focused on a unique and inexpensive method to fabricate microfluidic channels and wells, which form the basis of all microfluidic chips. The objectives for Phase II are to: 1) Expand the versatility of the system by inclusion to the platform system of fiber optic cables, temperature control capillaries, microfluidic design of static mixer and expansion of molding materials, 2) Design and construct a pilot automation system to increase control and reduce variability, 3) Test the automation system, 4) Test chips produced via the automated system and test additional versatility components from (1), and 5) Continue to commercialize the products. The technological outcome is an automated system with expanded versatility that will center on the construction of capillary electrophoresis chips, with the objective of making the system on that can manufacture a wide variety of microfluidic chips.