LiVoX – Magic Angle Coil Spinning NMR on Living Voxels received €150,000 funding by the European Research Council (ERC).
The LiVoX project, which started at the beginning of the month and runs until March 2017, will scale up the production process of chip-based NMR sensors that have so far just been used as prototypes in laboratories, to industrial series production.
Benefits include speeding up the NMR process, the ability to do more tests than conventional systems and get more information per sample due to higher sensitivity.
The chip acts as an intermediary with radio waves ‘talking’ to the chip and the chip to the sample in the NMR spectrometer.
Project path
Dr Jan Korvink, professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), said the microsensors are consumables for use with commercial NMR systems.
“ERC funds special projects, they are not awarded to groups or companies but given to a single scientist. It took about five years to obtain one and I really consider it quite an honour, you have a lot of freedom and can get on with the research, the current award augments the science project by helping to commercialise a discovery, and is called Proof of Concept,” he told FoodQualityNews.
“Foodstuff was not a major focus, it was always clear it was an important market, the question is if it was a good topic for the research project. You make a decision when writing the proposal and when you are funded you get more practical and pragmatic.
“We know how to manufacture the chips but probably producing millions is really different, so moving to more production and this scale-up is part of the unknowns.”
Dr Korvink said NMR is expensive but it is the gold standard.
“For example, if you are analysing olive oil it is more cost effective but retains the precision. Our chips are inexpensive and can be discarded. An NMR sensor or probe can cost up to €70,000 and with test tubes you need a large amount of substance to make the measurement,” he said.
“We have to prove to the reviewers the potential, this part of the project has a strict path in getting manufacturing issues solved and understanding the market. Then we test plan with customers such as beta-testing.
“The question is how quickly the market accepts it, the first chips in the form of evaluation will be in one year, the last half year will be to get feedback. The big problem as a scientist is getting everything right from the start, it is not possible, but you can build in early experience.
“The chip is for solid or liquid samples, really semi-solid substances like oils and butters, that is what we will address first.”
The project is one of 45 grant holders who will receive top-up funding to investigate commercial applications of frontier research results. The Proof of Concept scheme is open to ERC grant holders only.
Spin-off company
With the spinoff company Voxalytic, production steps will be checked for scalability and quality controls will be defined.
Voxalytic was founded in 2014 by Dr Joerg Funk, CFO, business consultant in Zurich, Switzerland, Dr Ulrike Wallrabe, COO, professor at the University of Freiburg and Dr Korvink who will be CEO.
The company focuses on developing, producing and marketing NMR microsensors for applications in life sciences, pharmaceutical and chemical industries, environmental monitoring, agriculture, and food.
LiVoX will make the NMR microchip sensor market-ready for novel applications such as foodstuff testing as molecules can be analyzed in detail or detected in samples by NMR methods.
The team said they were convinced the sensors will be accepted by the market, since it works with established and installed NMR hardware and provides increased measurement sensitivity.
“LiVoX will take a mass-producible NMR microchip sensor that is currently at technology readiness level (TRL) 6 at a university laboratory, and scale up the manufacturing towards wafer-scale mass production, by outsourcing the majority of the manufacturing steps,” according to a project brief.
“[It] will implement quality control procedures for production and sensor function, and will perform extensive beta testing at application sites, to drive the microchip sensors right up to commercialisation readiness at TRL 9.
“It is the clear goal [is] to transfer the microchip sensor manufacturing process to a start-up company at the end of this one year ramp-up period. LiVoX will remove the last barriers that remain for introduction of the microchip sensors into the marketplace.”