3D Printing as a tool for microfluidic devices fabrication

Microfluidic devices play an important role in many biological, chemical, and engineering applications, enabling to manipulate fluids on the microscale level and take advantage of physical laws, such as rapid diffusion and laminar flows [1]. Regarding Biological and medical applications, microfluidic technology enables study of cell behavior from single- to multi-cellular organism level with experimental conditions not possibleusing macroscopic tools [2].To date, soft lithography is used as the traditional and most common method for microfluidic devices fabrication [3]. In spite of its wide utilization and many advantages, soft lithography has some major disadvantages. It is costly, time consuming and restricted to two-dimensional design. Technological advancements in the field of 3D printing can significantly change the way we use and design microfluidics devices. Not only is it a one-step fabrication (mold or a complete device), it also enables designing and printing of three-dimensional structures that were nearly impossible using soft lithography, in a fast and relatively cheap process. Here, we demonstrate the use of a digital light processing (DLP) 3D printer for designing and fabricating molds and complete microfluidic devices.

References

[1] Bruce K. Gale, Alexander R. Jafek , Christopher J. Lambert, Brady L. Goenner, Hossein Moghimifam, Ugochukwu C. Nze and Suraj Kumar Kamarapu.A Review of Current Methods in Microfluidic Device Fabrication and Future Commercialization Prospects. Inventions 2018, 3, 60

[2]Guilhem Velve-Casquillas, Maël Le Berre, Matthieu Piel, and Phong T. Tran. Microfluidic tools for cell biological research. Nano Today. 2010 5(1): 28–47.

[3] Yang Lin, Can Gao, Dmitry Gritsenko, Ran Zhou, Jie Xu. Soft lithography based on photolithography and two-photon polymerization. Microfluidics and Nanofluidics,. 2018, 22:97.