Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) printing is emerging as a method for microfluidic device fabrication boasting facile and low-cost fabrication, as compared to conventional fabrication approaches, such as photolithography, for poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) counterparts. Additionally, there is an increasing trend in the development and implementation of miniaturized and automatized devices for health monitoring. While nonspecific protein adsorption by PDMS has been studied as a limitation for reusability, the protein adsorption characteristics of 3D-printed materials have not been well-studied or characterized. With these rationales in mind, we study the reusability of 3D-printed microfluidics chips. Herein, a 3D-printed cleaning chip, consisting of inlets for the sample, cleaning solution, and air, and a universal outlet, is presented to assess the reusability of a 3D-printed microfluidic device. Bovine serum albumin (BSA) was used a representative urinary protein and phosphate-buffered solution (PBS) was chosen as the cleaning agent. Using the 3-(4-carboxybenzoyl)quinoline-2-carboxaldehyde (CBQCA) fluorescence detection method, the protein cross-contamination between samples and the protein uptake of the cleaning chip were assessed, demonstrating a feasible 3D-printed chip design and cleaning procedure to enable reusable microfluidic devices. The performance of the 3D-printed cleaning chip for real urine sample handling was then validated using a commercial dipstick assay.
Highlights
There is significant interest in microfluidics due to its large variety of applications, including cancer screening [1,2,3], micro-physiological system engineering [4,5], high-throughput drug testing [6,7], and point-of-care diagnostics [8,9,10,11,12,13]
While microfluidic devices are low-cost in terms of material cost, conventional fabrication is challenging and costly
While single-use microfluidic chips may be practical for some applications, such as for prototyping and experimental testing, devices that allow for multiple uses are better suited for high-throughput testing and point-of-care diagnostics, as the limited lifetime of microfluidic devices has been cited as a barrier to commercialization [25]
Summary
There is significant interest in microfluidics due to its large variety of applications, including cancer screening [1,2,3], micro-physiological system engineering [4,5], high-throughput drug testing [6,7], and point-of-care diagnostics [8,9,10,11,12,13]. A primary challenge in producing microfluidic devices for long-term use is the biofouling that often occurs on the surface of integrated channels and features [39,40] This phenomenon occurs, due to surface interactions between the walls of the channels and the biological sample flowing through the channels. To address the long-term use of microfluidic devices, there has been a growing research interest in developing new anti-fouling methods and materials [21,22,41,42,43] Other alternatives, such as recyclable chips or reusable chips, are actively being explored [23,24,32,44]. The final chip design was assessed for printing accuracy by measuring the width of the printed channels using a desktop microscope and comparing this to the expected 1000 μm width
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