QATCH TECHNOLOGIES LLC — Department of Commerce SBIR Phase I: None
QATCH TECHNOLOGIES LLC — SBIR Phase I award from Department of Commerce.
- Amount
- $99,983
- Agency
- Department of Commerce · National Institute of Standards and Technology
- Program / Phase
- SBIR · Phase I
- Topic
- None
- NAICS
- —
- Place of performance
- NC
- Period
- 2019-08-01 → 2020-01-31
Description
The objective of this SBIR Phase I proposal is to determine the feasibility of viscosity characterization of high concentration protein formulations (HCF) by QATCH’s microcapillary quartz technology. HCFs are non-Newtonian fluids with shear-thinning behavior and they are administered to patients by subcutaneous or muscular injections. The injectability of HCFs depends on the viscosity at high-shear-rates (usually over 100,000 1/s). QATCH’s proposed technology implements a microfluidic capillary viscometer on a quartz resonator. This unique combination can interrogate low shear-rate regimes while also measuring the thickness-shear mode resonances of the quartz resonator, which observe viscosity values over 1,000,000 1/s. As a result, the viscosity of HCFs can be characterized over a wide range of shear-rates with very small fluid volumes. In preliminary studies, QATCH had demonstrated that microfluidic quartz can measure viscosity at high-shear-rates experimentally and had modeled the response of the microfluidic quartz resonators to capillary filling of shear-thinning fluids. To accomplish the objective of this SBIR proposal, QATCH will test the low and high-shear rate measurement capability of the system and then calculate the required injection forces for well studied formulations.