Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

In many fields of importance to Canadians' health and well-being, including environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, food safety, forensics, and basic biological research, the ability to perform biological and chemical agent detection is of paramount importance. There is a growing need for instruments for fast, accurate, and inexpensive sample manipulation with high-throughput for detection of agents from: 1) many samples; and/or 2) to detect multiple agents in a single sample. Currently, such large scale analysis is performed using slow conventional lab techniques or large table-top systems. Microfluidics technology, which is the manipulation of small liquid volumes in sub-millimetre tubes, offers unparalleled promise for innovation in minimizing instrument size, sample volume, and cost. However, while many successful microfluidic technologies have been developed, their adoption has thus far been limited due to: the large size (footprint) for multiple parallel fluid channels; technologies requiring large off-chip support such as pneumatics; or strict requirements for fluid manipulation and transfer between devices. The objective of this proposal is to design and fabricate uROAMS: a Microfluidic, Reconfigurable On-site Analyser for Multiplexed Samples, which is a new approach to the high-throughput portability problem accomplished through the merging of electronically controlled functional materials for microfluidics with state-of-the-art field programmable technology. We propose to develop enabling technologies for portable sample analysis that employ a microfluidic multiplexing device based on a reconfigurable microfluidic interconnect. uROAMS has its basis in the applicant's prior research and expertise, with market pull and application-specific expertise from our environmental sector industrial partner. Our unit will be both portable and generic, and will produce a disruptive modular commercial product with applications in multiple market sectors, while producing transferable MEMS technology applicable across multiple disciplines.