Commercial testing laboratories need highly accurate, very low concentration, repeatable measurements. For example, a typical water testing laboratory will be running a mass spectrometer to determine 15 or more elements within a sample which may contain the target elements at parts-per-million (ppm) or parts-per-billion (ppb) concentration levels.A soil testing lab will typically analyse between 15 and 50 elements, depending on the source of a presumed contamination. The measurement instrument needs to be calibrated with both single elements and multi-element high accuracy reference concentrations. The reference level of each analyte will depend on the type of sample being analysed. The current method, to prepare precise solutions and reference standards for calibration, is to use a calibrated pipette to transfer a precise volume (e.g. 100ul) of commercially available Certified Reference Material (CRM) for the element to be tested and to deposit this liquid into an accurate volume (typically 5mL) of dilute acid, frequently an ultra-high purity nitric acid solution. Thereafter, it is often necessary to take an accurate volume of this first dilution (e.g. 50ul) and further dilute this in another accurately measured volume of dilute acid. This process may need to be repeated many times to achieve a required dilution concentration. The process requires a skilled operator, time and patience, if the final solution is to be an accurate concentration of the original reagent. Assuming a conservative average of 15 calibration curves needed, then 150 (15*10) solutions need to be prepared which will take between 2.5 and 5 hours. This amounts to between 17.5 hours and 35 hours per week spent manually preparing calibration solutions.
Cal-Mate will automate the process of preparing ultra-high precision and ultra-high accuracy dilutions for calibration standards for dispensing within minutes. PolyPico’s core technology dispenses volumes of fluid in the nano (10-9) & micro (10-6) range of volumes from precise increments which are in the pico (10-12) litre range, hence accuracies are achieved within the tolerance band of +/- 1 micro-drop and at a 1 microlitre volume, are up to 20,000 times more accurate than pipettes! To help put this level of precise granularity in perspective: a PolyPico dispenser can generate up to 1 Billion (1,000,000,000) individual identical fluid samples from a single teaspoon of fluid.
The overall objective of this feasibility study is to develop the design and technical specification of Cal-Mate for development and definition of the business plan for commercialisation for implementation at Phase 2.
