Rapid Prototyping System™

Shrink is developing a low cost biochip prototyping system which provides for the rapidly design, fabrication and manufacture of customizable biological research chips, including more complicated microfluidic assays such as integrated lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices. A lab-on-a-chip device is an integrated biodevice that contains several lab functions on a single “chip”. Specific examples include: real-time PCR, pathogen and disease detection, biochemical assays, immunoassays, clinical lab assays, blood sample preparations, etc.

Presently, in order to microfabricate the intricate and highly precise features used in microfluidic and LOC applications, highly trained workers are need to perform complicated tasks, including the operation of an expensive capital equipment and suite of machines.

The ShrinkChip RPS™ is the center of a potential product offering that includes consumables such as specialized blades and the NanoShrink™ material, future software to help users create microfluidic designs with predesigned microfluidic components, and services for transferring product designs to production.

The ShrinkChip RPS™ would be able to produce inexpensive, polymeric microfluidic devices with features comparable to more complicated prototyping systems. It is capable of producing 8μm channels and 35μm wide positive features, with aspect ratios up to 8 and channel depth from 25 to 600μm. The main benefit from this system is the ability to produce prototypes in less than an hour, eliminating the need for labs to contract out their prototyping, especially proof of concept microfluidic designs.

The main advantages the ShrinkChip RPS™ has over other prototyping methods are cost and speed. A capital investment that is projected to cost less than $5000 for a lab/customer is significantly less than most other prototyping equipment, making it affordable for each lab to purchase, increasing the incentive to test new ideas.  The most expensive consumable would be the blades, which are less expensive than a photomask and can be used for more than one design. In addition, the polymer films are inexpensive enough to try out many concepts over multiple dimensions to produce optimized features.

Speed is the ShrinkChip RPS™ most important advantage for truly rapid prototyping LOC applications. It can create micro-structures in a matter of inutes depending on the level of complexity without photolithographic processes or chemicals. Laboratories without access to clean room microfabrication facilities can quickly design, build, and test first stage microfluidic device prototypes. (Such advantages are also beneficial to established microfabrication facilities.) The time and prototyping costs saved will allow researchers to focus on the application development before moving on to more expensive fabrication techniques. Being able to quickly build a device and test a concept could be the difference in accelerating the design cycle and bringing a product-to-market or results-to-publication faster.