Abstract
This study presents the development of a robust aluminum-based microfluidic chip fabricated by conventional mechanical micromachining (computer numerical control-based micro-milling process). It applied the aluminum-based microfluidic chip to form poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles encapsulating CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs). A cross-flow design and flow-focusing system were employed to control the oil-in-water (o/w) emulsification to ensure the generation of uniformly-sized droplets. The size of the droplets could be tuned by adjusting the flow rates of the water and oil phases. The proposed microfluidic platform is easy to fabricate, set up, organize as well as program, and is valuable for further applications under harsh reaction conditions (high temperature and/or strong organic solvent systems). The proposed method has the advantages of actively controlling the droplet diameter, with a narrow size distribution, good sphericity, as well as being a simple process with a high throughput. In addition to the fluorescent PLGA microparticles in this study, this approach can also be applied to many applications in the pharmaceutical and biomedical area.
Highlights
Microfluidics has been increasingly gaining attention in crucial application areas ranging from chemical synthesis and analysis, medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, to analytical microsystems for cell biology [1,2,3,4]
We describe an application of the micro-milling process and the microfluidic technique for generating fluorescent poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microparticles
The ro oughness Sqq, defined as the quadratic mean of the deviation from the mean in the EUR 15178 EN report, is 2.14 μm measured by a TalyScan 150 profilometer. These results show that the fabricated micro-sized platform of the Al microfluidic chip is sufficient to generate micro-droplets by breaking up immiscible liquids in order to produce fluorescent monodispersed microparticles
Summary
Microfluidics has been increasingly gaining attention in crucial application areas ranging from chemical synthesis and analysis, medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, to analytical microsystems for cell biology [1,2,3,4]. The fabrication of microfluidic chips can be classified into direct substrate manufacturing and mold-based techniques [2,4,7,12]. Laser ablation has the advantage of direct-write micromachining without a mask process and does not depend as much on the type of substrate material used [15]. Microchannels fabricated by laser ablation have a greater surface roughness than those produced by the general mold-based techniques such as hot embossing, imprinting, or injection molding [13]. Mechanical micromachining is not very satisfactory for miniaturization work, it can be used for dimensional structures as small as 50 micrometers [5,16] We believe that it is suitable for producing microfluidic droplets. To-date few studies have applied the conventional direct-write mechanical micromachining method for fabricating microchannels for producing microfluidic droplets. The fabricated Al microfluidic chips have the advantages of being durable and long-wearing, with a high chemical resistance to organic solvents, and a design that allows for easy disassembly, channel rinse and cleaning
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