3D printing-based microfluidic devices in fabric

Abstract

Fabric-based microfluidics is a growing sub-field of porous materials-based microfluidics. 3D printing has been demonstrated as a useful fabrication method for open channel microfluidic devices, and also in the context of porous substates such as cellulose. In the current report, we describe a straightforward method for 3D printing fabric-based microfluidic devices. We demonstrate the ability to create both full and partial barriers in fabric, characterizing minimum channel and barrier widths, as well as reproducibility of the method using the metric of flow time repeatability through the channels. We discuss considerations specific to 3D printing in fabric including fabric anisotropy, stretching, and nonuniformity. Further, we highlight our fabrication method via the implementation of a colorimetric urea assay.