High Performance Wafer-Based Capillary Electrochromatography, Phase II

The Phase II research comprises designing, constructing, and testing a chip-based capillary electrochromatography (CEC) prototype for separation and analysis of organic and inorganic molecules including amino acids and ions. The innovation of the proposed technology stems from its ability to achieve high sample retention and selectivity and yet maintain high separation efficiency, thus filling an important gap between the current technologies of capillary electrophoresis (CE) and high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Such microfluidics devices will enable analyte samples to be prepared, processed, and analyzed in "lab-on-a-chip" (LOC) type instrumentation in Micro Laboratories applications. In addition, they will be engineered for integration with established LOC analysis systems. The Phase II Research will address issues related to the performance and production methods for the technology. Commercial devices based on the Phase II prototype will be constructed and subsequently refined and commercialized during Phase III.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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