The research team is headed by engineering Professors Thurman Henderson and Chong Ahn and includes engineering faculty members Neville Pinto, Arthur Helmicki, and Joe Nevin as well as chemistry professors William Heineman and Brian Halsall. The researchers expect their design would then be adaptable to a wide variety of chemical or biological applications. Professor Henderson said the collaboration is important, because it takes the expertise of research chemists and puts it in a form that can be used by almost anyone. We don't have to be chemists ourselves. There are several other advantages to doing chemistry or biology on a chip.
Less material means lower cost.
Smaller systems can also run much faster. Henderson estimates that a reaction that typically takes 30 minutes in a lab might take only a few seconds on the chemistry chip. The analysis will closely resemble what happens in a full-scale chemical laboratory, but it will simply happen on a microscopic scale. We're going to have microvalves, micro pumps, reserviors, and controllers. We already have so many MEMS components.