A novel, low cost, and accessible method for rapid fabrication of the modifiable microfluidic devices

Mohsen Annabestani,Mehdi Fardmanesh,Pouria Esmaeili-Dokht

doi:10.1038/s41598-020-73535-w

Mohsen Annabestani, Mehdi Fardmanesh + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-73535-w

Copy DOI

Journal: Scientific Reports	Publication Date: Oct 5, 2020
Citations: 19	License type: open-access

Affiliation: Sharif University of Technology

Abstract

As microfluidic chips are evolving to become a significant analysis tool toward POCT devices, it is crucial to make the cost and the time required for the fabrication process of these chips as low as possible. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of these systems and the collaboration of many different laboratories and organizations from vastly various fields with unequal types of equipment, it is essential to develop new techniques and materials to make the integration of disparate systems together more straightforward, accessible, and economical. In this paper, we present ethylene–vinyl acetate (EVA) as a new polymer-based material for the fabrication of different microfluidic chips, which brings new features and tools in fabrication, integration, and functionality of microfluidic systems. We put this material next to PDMS for comparison between various aspects of these materials. We have shown that besides the low-cost ability, ubiquitousness, geometrical modifiability, and ease of fabrication of EVA chips, due the lower hydrophobicity and lower terahertz (THz) absorption of EVA than PDMS, EVA chips, in comparison to PDMS counterparts, can work faster, have less number of channel blocking and can be used in THz biosensing application like metamaterial-based cancer detection. Finally, several devices are made using EVA to demonstrate the functionality and versatility of this material for the fabrication of microfluidic chips.

Highlights

As microfluidic chips are evolving to become a significant analysis tool toward POCT devices, it is crucial to make the cost and the time required for the fabrication process of these chips as low as possible
We introduced ethylene–vinyl acetate (EVA) as a new alternative to PDMS for the fabrication of different microfluidic devices
We showed that this material possesses superiority in terms of economic cost, fabrication time loss, handling, inerrability, absorption, bonding, and ease of use. Both materials’ production cost was evaluated in terms of the material cost, which showed great promises for the mass production of POCT and healthcare devices based on EVA microfluidic chips, and the ease of production and processing of EVA showed a considerable leap toward the commercializing POCT devices based on microfluidics

Summary

EVA properties for microfluidics

To have practical microfluidic devices, we need to choose appropriate materials that can satisfy the required conditions of microfluidic applications. These requirements are dependent on the application; for example, in an optofluidic system, it is necessary to use a transparent material, or in continuous and permanent devices, we need to use some materials with a low level of hydrophobicity to immune the system against channel blocking In this part, we want to investigate some critical features of EVA (in comparison to PDMS) that we may need them in microfluidic devices. In terms of transparency in different frequencies, complete research was done independently for these two materials in the terahertz spectrum, which we will use the results for comparison between t hem[13,29]. The experiment has been done by a commercial optical contact angle measuring and contour analysis systems (OCA-DataPhysics Instruments) and has been repeated for several points on the EVA and PDMS surfaces and the averages has been reported here (Fig. 7)

Experimental validation

Conclusion

Findings

Additional information