The broadder impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to advance the development of microfluidic devices for life sciences research. Currently, devices with high-resolution microchannels are typically manufactured using sophisticated cleanroom microfabrication facilities, requiring technical expertise, high costs, and long turnaround times; these factors inhibit their use. This project will enable rapid manufacturing of customized microfluidics devices with substantially lower costs and turnaround times. This technology will impact research in applications including fundamental cell biology, drug screening, cellular therapy, toxicity testing, and tissue engineering.
This SBIR Phase I project will advance the translation of hybrid laser printing (HLP), combining the quick and large-scale printing capability of Continuous Liquid Interface Production (CLIP) with precision processing of additive multiphoton polymerization (MPP) and subtractive multiphoton ablation (MPA) into a single versatile machine. Technical challenges in material discovery and scalability will be addressed in this work: 1) Discover new materials not only compatible with HLP process but also showing the necessary durability, transparency, biocompatibility, and impermeability to fluids; and characterize key HLP parameters, such as ablation z-range used in MPA mode and dead-zone thickness used in CLIP mode; and 2) Scale the maximum printable size of HLP process using a novel multiscale CLIP strategy combined with a step-stitch projection printing method. The project will develop a prototype for life sciences applications.
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.
