EAGER: Microfluidic Design Automation

EAGER：微流体设计自动化

• 批准号: 2140148
• 负责人: Bruce Gale
• 金额: $ 30万
• 依托单位: University of Utah
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-09-01 至 2023-03-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2140148&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Microfluidic; Design; Automation

Microfluidic systems employ hair-sized channels to analyze fluids in credit card sized devices. Microfluidics has been shown to improve the accuracy, speed, and cost of medical tests, drug discovery, and chemical testing, but every new medical test needs to be custom designed, making microfluidic chips expensive. 3D printing (3DP) has the potential to make custom devices quickly and inexpensively. The problem with combining microfluidics and 3D printing is that an engineer with deep knowledge of the 3DP process is needed to do each design. In contrast, engineers have developed microelectronic design tools that design chips automatically. This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project will investigate using the principles applied in microelectronic design to produce automated design tools that enable medical technicians to design custom microfluidic devices that can be ordered and reliably 3D printed. Ultimately, custom tests might be designed, ordered, printed, and sent to a clinic or doctor’s office. The microfluidic devices could become a critical part of healthcare, food safety, chemical testing, and biodefense.The use of design automation approaches and software can greatly improve the efficiency of design, validation, and manufacturing of microfluidic devices. Current CAD and simulation tools must be customized for each application, making them slow and expensive, and microfluidic chips often require redesign due to imperfect manual placement and routing. To overcome these challenges, several key scientific barriers need to be overcome to utilize design automation for 3D printed microfluidics. Specifically, there is a need to emulate the complexities of fluid dynamics in design automation simulation software, perform 3D placement and routing, and automate the post-processing of 3D printed microfluidic devices. The research team will develop a physics-based fluid dynamics framework for SPICE simulations coded in Verilog-AMS that handles the complexities of fluids, a placement and routing approach to build 3D designs using current open-source EDA tools with a multilayer approach, and automated systems to remove uncured resin in printed devices. The approach will be validated by using the tools to design, optimize, fabricate, and test DNA analysis devices.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

微流体系统采用头发大小的通道来分析信用卡大小设备中的流体。已经证明微流体可以提高医疗测试，药物发现和化学测试的准确性，速度和成本，但是每项新的医疗测试都需要定制，从而使微流体芯片变得昂贵。 3D打印（3DP）有可能快速，廉价地制作自定义设备。结合微流体和3D打印的问题在于，需要深入了解3DP工艺的工程师来进行每种设计。相比之下，工程师开发了自动设计芯片的微电子设计工具。这项对探索性研究（急切）项目的早期概念赠款将使用微电源设计中应用的原理进行调查，以生产自动设计工具，使医疗技术人员能够设计可以订购并可靠的3D打印的自定义微流体设备。最终，可以设计，订购，印刷并发送到诊所或医生办公室的定制测试。微流体设备可能会成为医疗保健，食品安全，化学测试和生物化的关键部分。设计自动化方法和软件的使用可以大大提高微流体设备的设计，验证和制造的效率。当前的CAD和仿真工具必须为每个应用程序定制，使其缓慢且昂贵，并且微流体芯片通常由于手动放置和路由而需要重新设计。为了克服这些挑战，需要克服几个关键的科学障碍，以利用3D印刷微流体的设计自动化。具体而言，需要模拟设计自动化模拟软件中流体动力学的复杂性，执行3D放置和路由，并自动化3D打印微流体设备的后处理。研究团队将开发一个基于物理的流体动力学框架，用于用Verilog-AMS编码的香料模拟，该框架处理流体的复杂性，一种使用当前的开源EDA工具构建3D设计的放置和路由方法，并使用多层方法和自动化系统来删除印刷品中未固定的树脂的自动化系统。该方法将通过使用工具来设计，优化，制造和测试DNA分析设备来验证该方法。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准，被认为是珍贵的支持。