SBIR Phase I: Microfilm to enable enhanced mixing in low-resource diagnostics

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is to enable smaller diagnostic systems and smaller blood draws without compromising on sample quality and time-to-result. Currently, clinicians who want to ensure that blood samples are well stabilized must use test tubes 1 mL or larger. Meanwhile, point-of-care tests that use smaller volumes are challenged to disperse analytic reagents rapidly and evenly throughout the volume. This project will develop a microfluidic platform for rapid dispersal of dried reagents in whole blood. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project tackles a vexing technical challenge. Mixing is hard to achieve in microfluidic systems due to the lack of turbulence. In these so-called low Reynolds number environments, a solute will only move relative to its solvent by diffusion. Depending on the temperature, the size of the solute, and the viscosity of the solvent, mixing across a millimeter-scale chamber can take minutes or even hours. This project will demonstrate a low-power, non-destructive microfluidic mixing technology to rapidly disperse dried reagents into blood. The goal is to accelerate time-to-completion by as much as 10x.