Abstract
Additive manufacturing has been a cornerstone of the product development pipeline for decades, playing an essential role in the creation of both functional and cosmetic prototypes. In recent years, the prospects for distributed and open source manufacturing have grown tremendously. This growth has been enabled by an expanding library of printable materials, low-cost printers, and communities dedicated to platform development. The microfluidics community has embraced this opportunity to integrate 3D printing into the suite of manufacturing strategies used to create novel fluidic architectures. The rapid turnaround time and low cost to implement these strategies in the lab makes 3D printing an attractive alternative to conventional micro- and nanofabrication techniques. In this work, the production of multiple microfluidic architectures using a hybrid 3D printing-soft lithography approach is demonstrated and shown to enable rapid device fabrication with channel dimensions that take advantage of laminar flow characteristics. The fabrication process outlined here is underpinned by the implementation of custom design software with an integrated slicer program that replaces less intuitive computer aided design and slicer software tools. Devices are designed in the program by assembling parameterized microfluidic building blocks. The fabrication process and flow control within 3D printed devices were demonstrated with a gradient generator and two droplet generator designs. Precise control over the printing process allowed 3D microfluidics to be printed in a single step by extruding bridge structures to ‘jump-over’ channels in the same plane. This strategy was shown to integrate with conventional nanofabrication strategies to simplify the operation of a platform that incorporates both nanoscale features and 3D printed microfluidics.
Highlights
Additive manufacturing is poised to change how we design, manufacture, and receive goods [1]
The fabrication of nano- and microfluidic devices was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is DOE Office of Science User Facilities
We have previously shown that crude acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS) filaments can be hand-shaped and incorporated into a microfabricated silicon mold to connect individual modules and change the fluidic network for a given application to create fluidic bridges [26], there is a need for an automated fabrication process for incorporating fluidic bridges into microfluidic systems
Summary
Additive manufacturing is poised to change how we design, manufacture, and receive goods [1]. It has allowed engineers and product designers to rapidly produce physical 3D objects in an iterative process to refine ergonomics, identify manufacturing challenges, and communicate marketing concepts rapidly and with minimal cost. Accessing microfluidics through feature-based design software for 3D printing. The fabrication of nano- and microfluidic devices was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is DOE Office of Science User Facilities. There was no additional external funding received for this study
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