NASA has used MicroFab’s microdispensers in the initial tests in microgravity environment on a reduced gravity parabolic orbit flight. The Observation and Analysis of Smectic Islands in Space (OASIS) projects is exploring the characteristics of freely suspended liquid crystals in a microgravity environment. MicroFab’s ink-jet dispensers were used to deposit droplets on a liquid crystal surface. The dispensers will be implemented on the equipment that will fly on the International Space Station in 2014 where the complete experiments will take place. The image on the right shows the bubble chamber using MicroFab’s ink-jet dispensers.

MicroFab will develop, for a US Army funded project titled Bio-printed Constructs for Battlefield Burn Repairs, an in situ tissue engineering system for the repair of battlefield burn injuries. Inkjet-based dispensing systems, protocols, and materials that enable repair of life threatening battlefield burn injuries will be developed. This will allow army medical personnel to respond promptly in managing burn injuries using inkjet printed tissue engineered dermal repair constructs that are far superior to currently available autografts.

MicroFab receives a two year Phase I SBIR award from the National Institutes of Health for the development of an inkjet-based instrument to perform ultra-low volume crystallization screening of brain-derived GPCRs using the highly effective in meso lipid cubic phase (LCP) approach.

The collaborative work with NIST on the fabrication of test strips for testing the explosive trace detectors brought up the need to track the dispensed amount of material. The new Jetlab® 4xl-B system incorporates a micro-balance for accurate determination of the droplet mass, and tracks and records the results of the measurements.