NSF Award
0060258
This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will develop a novel microchip chemical analyzer that incorporates a new nanomaterial that performs both separation and detection of small quantities of chemicals and biochemicals. This will be accomplished by developing the required chemistry and processing to coat microchannels (20 x 50 microns) with a proprietary material that contains silver nanoparticles capable of supporting plasmon surface modes and generating surface-enhanced Raman (SER) spectra. Preliminary studies suggest this new nanomaterial will provide continuous, reproducible, quantitative, reversible, and rapid chemical analysis to part per trillion concentrations in nanoliter sample volumes. Phase I will prove feasibility by preparing microchip chemical analyzers and testing their SER-activity. Testing will include several test chemicals (p-aminobenzoic acid, phenyl acetylene, etc.), pharmaceuticals (amobarbital, barbital, and phenylbarbital), and the four DNA bases (adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine).<br/><br/>The commercial market applications for this technology include biotechnology (DNA sequencing, protein analysis), medicine (metabolite analysis), and pharmaceutical (high-throughput molecular structure identification).
