Grant: Strategic Projects - Group

This proposal responds directly to Canada's strategic objective of developing innovative and competitive manufacturing processes for producing and employing improved functional materials in biotechnology and other relevant areas. Printing technologies are increasingly playing an important role in both research and industry as a fabrication platform for exploring many innovative applications that depart from the conventional application of document printing. The proposed integrated high-throughput micro-printing platform technology will advance the state-of-the-art in printing and has many strategic applications including tissue engineering, drug discovery and testing, and printable microelectromechanical systems. We propose a platform technology that will combine the versatility and high functionality of microfluidics technology, a novel polymer micronozzle technology for improving printing reliability, with inkjet-printing technology to create an innovative fabrication and material processing system. Our technology is expected to improve printing and dispensing reliability, handle a larger range of material properties, increase throughput while minimizing the cost and time of printing and therefore enable truly unique applications in materials processing and biotechnology. The system comprises a disposable cartridge containing a versatile microfluidic system bonded to an array of micronozzles. A micro-mechanical actuator will enable the system to handle liquids with a greater range of properties compared to conventional platforms. Embedded microfluidics will facilitate complex liquid manipulation operations including mixing for preparing droplets with programmable composition. The ability to route those solutions to individual nozzles gives the user a drop composition on demand capability. Innovative polymer miconozzles will allow us to deposit droplets with pico-litre to nano-litre drop volume-on-demand with micrometer placement resolution for creating complex patterns and gradients with greater reliability. We will use the platform to dispense cells or tissue spheroids in hydrogel to form mini tissue constructs relevant for high throughput cell-based drug screening assays.