Abstract
In recent years, additive manufacturing has steadily gained attention in both research and industry. Applications range from prototyping to small-scale production, with 3D printing offering reduced logistics overheads, better design flexibility and ease of use compared with traditional fabrication methods. In addition, printer and material costs have also decreased rapidly. These advantages make 3D printing attractive for application in microfluidic chip fabrication. However, 3D printing microfluidics is still a new area. Is the technology mature enough to print complex microchannel geometries, such as droplet microfluidics? Can 3D-printed droplet microfluidic chips be used in biological or chemical applications? Is 3D printing mature enough to be used in every research lab? These are the questions we will seek answers to in our systematic review. We will analyze (1) the key performance metrics of 3D-printed droplet microfluidics and (2) existing biological or chemical application areas. In addition, we evaluate (3) the potential of large-scale application of 3D printing microfluidics. Finally, (4) we discuss how 3D printing and digital design automation could trivialize microfluidic chip fabrication in the long term. Based on our analysis, we can conclude that today, 3D printers could already be used in every research lab. Printing droplet microfluidics is also a possibility, albeit with some challenges discussed in this review.
Highlights
IntroductionAdditive manufacturing of microfluidics has recently gained in popularity, and increasingly complex 3D-printed (3DP) microfluidic chips are demonstrated in the literature [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]
We looked at the technology used for 3D printing droplet microfluidic chips and their droplet generation performance
3D printing can make testing new microfluidic chip designs easy, but as we showed in the previous section, 3DP chips could be used for biological or chemical analysis directly. 3DP chip fabrication is less labor-intensive and time-consuming than PDMS
Summary
Additive manufacturing of microfluidics has recently gained in popularity, and increasingly complex 3D-printed (3DP) microfluidic chips are demonstrated in the literature [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15]. It is clear that a large number of papers have discussed 3DP technology, materials and chip printing This is by far the most extensively covered area in reviews, and several well-illustrated descriptions of the various 3DP technologies are available. By the number of indexed publications, SLA is by far the most popular technique for the 3D printing of microfluidics in general, as well as droplet microfluidics in particular This is likely due to the fact that SLA is fairly cheap and easy to use, can implement overhangs (and channels), produces relatively smooth surfaces and has a good resolution. The screen projects images of the layers into the resin to selectively cure it This makes SLA an excellent candidate for the large-scale application of 3D printing microfluidic chips. SLA is the most likely candidate for large-scale chip fabrication from a technological perspective
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