New Optical Mixer for Microfluidics
Introduction One of the fastest growing areas of microfluidics research involves the development of Labon- a-Chip (LOC) technology. LOCs combine several laboratory processes on a chip commonly only millimeters in size while manipulating liquid volumes of picoliter size or less. In order to effectively perform the many processes that may be required of an LOC, various tools are required, such as pumps, valves, and mixers. In particular, the development of mixers has realized many effective, novel devices. However, these mixers often consist of complex static or dynamic parts that require equally complex fabrication methodology, or they create excessive heat that limits a device’s range of use, or they are difficult to integrate. Technology Description Professor Lin at the University of Washington has developed a new type of microfluidic mixer that utilizes light-induced localized surface plasmons (LSP) with a nanoparticle substrate to drive convective mixing of fluids. This device offers precise, rapid, on-demand mixing, it has no critical requirements for incident angle of light, and it has a low optical intensity requirement. The device is easily integrated, and the same light source can potentially effect mixing in multiple locations. Business Opportunity Effective microfluidic optical mixing presents opportunities for the development of a variety of LOCs with applications that include chemical analysis, environmental monitoring, biomedical diagnostics, genomics, proteomics, rapid screening, and microreactor synthesis. It has the potential to improve processes requiring small fluid volumes, faster analysis times, compact systems, parallelization, and reduced handling times and material costs. Stage of Development A working prototype of this device has been developed. Intellectual Property Position The UW has patents pending on this technology.Type of Offer: Licensing
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