Abstract
This study develops a new solvent-compatible microfluidic chip based on phenol formaldehyde resin (PFR). In addition to its solvent-resistant characteristics, this microfluidic platform also features easy fabrication, organization, decomposition for cleaning, and reusability compared with conventional chips. Both solvent-dependent (e.g., polycaprolactone) and nonsolvent-dependent (e.g., chitosan) microparticles were successfully prepared. The size of emulsion droplets could be easily adjusted by tuning the flow rates of the dispersed/continuous phases. After evaporation, polycaprolactone microparticles ranging from 29.3 to 62.7 μm and chitosan microparticles ranging from 215.5 to 566.3 μm were obtained with a 10% relative standard deviation in size. The proposed PFR microfluidic platform has the advantages of active control of the particle size with a narrow size distribution as well as a simple and low cost process with a high throughput.
Highlights
Microfluidics is a set of technologies for manipulating nanoliter volumes of fluids in channels with dimensions measured in tenths or even hundreds of micrometers [1]
Based on our previous microfluidic platforms for the generation of various polymer particles [22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31], this study provides a new solvent-compatible microfluidic chip based on phenol formaldehyde resin (PFR) to prepare uniform microparticles
The proposed PFR microfluidic chip is designed to be disassembled for microchannel cleaning
Summary
Microfluidics is a set of technologies for manipulating nanoliter volumes of fluids in channels with dimensions measured in tenths or even hundreds of micrometers [1]. Silicone or glass-based fabrication processes are labor intensive and time-consuming, and require costly clean-room facilities and instruments for their photolithography and etching processes, so from a material viewpoint, silicon or glass/quartz-based microfluidic chips have some limitations in practice Other rigid materials such as steel or aluminum provide alternative choices for a microfluidic chip substrate [5]. They have advantages such as non-permeable walls, good heat conductivity, robust stability, and durable operation under harsh reaction conditions such as high temperature and/or strong organic solvent systems for certain applications. The limitations of those materials for microfluidic devices are that they are difficult, time-consuming, and costly to fabricate [6]
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