Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

The ability to visualize a chemical reaction in real-time is a very powerful and much needed tool. Real-time feedback allows chemical researchers to expedite the research and discovery process; allowing them to more rapidly identify new transformations and study new catalysts. At the same time, this technology is needed to safely control production and manufacturing processes. Many analytical techniques have been adapted to probe chemical reactions in real-time, however, most have serious restrictions on the kind of reaction that can be investigated, or require significant effort to prepare samples for visualization. This is especially true for analysis by Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR). Despite the wealth of kinetic and structural information available through this technique, broad application has been hampered by the technical challenges of sampling and analysis. The challenge is to design and integrate an efficient workflow that allows any reaction to be probed quickly, accurately and with minimal perturbation of the system under study. Equally important is the software to allow seamless integration of analytical data from multiple orthogonal techniques. This project will develop new hardware and software technology through a four-part partnership between Nanalysis Corp. (NAN), Trout GmbH (TRT), the Fraunhofer Institute for Microengineering and Microsystems (IMM) and the Hein lab at the University of British Columbia (UBC). This comprehensive international team has separately demonstrated the required expertise to successfully build and deploy this ambitions technology platform.