I-Corps: Highly portable hemodialysis enabled by ultrathin silicon membranes

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

Acute Renal Failure complicates 5% of all medical and surgical hospital admissions in the United States, but not all hospitals provide acute dialysis. Low cost portable systems will allow more hospitals to provide these emergency treatments. The proposed project aims to develop a portable hemodialysis system for acute renal replacement therapy that clears toxins at rates required for human treatments. The team intends to enter the market place by introducing a small format portable dialysis enabled by highly efficient silicon nanomembranes applied to ambulatory dialysis and mobile home dialysis analysis. High membrane permeability is the key to creating a small-format hemodialysis device. Simply, the greater the efficiency of a membrane in clearing toxins, the less membrane area is necessary to achieve a given clearance and the smaller the device format required for clearance. The team has introduced a new class of membrane - ultrathin porous nanocrystalline silicon (pnc-Si). This membrane material is highly manufacturable with pore size control (5 nm to 100 nm), molecular scale thinness (<50 nm), and enough strength to support an atmosphere or more of differential pressure. Because of the molecular-scale thinness, both small molecule diffusion and hydraulic permeability are 3 to 4 orders of magnitude higher with pnc-Si than conventional dialysis membranes. The proposed membranes are also orders of magnitude more permeable than 'nanoslot' membranes reported in the literature as having benefit for an implantable hemodialysis system. The team has also shown that the silicon nanomembranes have the ability to separate species that differ by only a few nanometers in size and specifically separate molecules middle weight protein toxins from serum albumin as required in hemodialysis.