Fabrication of Different Microchannels by Adjusting the Extrusion Parameters for Sacrificial Molds.

Wenlai Tang,Hao Liu,Nan Xiang,Jianping Shi,Jiquan Yang,Zongan Li,Liya Zhu

doi:10.3390/mi10080544

Abstract

Using the 3D printed mold-removal method to fabricate microchannel has become a promising alternative to the conventional soft lithography technique, due to the convenience in printing channel mold and the compatibility with PDMS material. Although having great potential, the use of single filament extruded by fused deposition modeling (FDM) as the sacrificial channel mold has not been elaborately studied. In this paper, we demonstrate the fabrication of microchannels with different structure and size by controllably extruding the sacrificial channel molds. The influences of the main processing parameters including working distance, extrusion amount and printing speed on the printed microchannels are systematically investigated. The results show that, the circular and low-aspect-ratio straight microchannels with different sizes can be fabricated by adjusting the extrusion amounts. The sinusoidal, 3D curved and cross-linked curved microchannels along straight path can be fabricated, either independently or in combination, by the combined control of the working distance, extrusion amount and printing speed. The complex microchannels with different structural features can also be printed along curved serpentine, rectangular serpentine, and spiral paths. This paper presents a simple and powerful method to fabricate the complex microchannels with different structure and size by just controlling the processing parameters for extruding channel molds.

Highlights

Microfluidics [1], which can offer the controlled manipulation of fluids and particles at the micro domain, has been widely used in biological [2], medical [3], chemical [4] and environmental [5] fields, due to the advantages of low sample consumption, short processing time and high detection accuracy
The results show that, fabricating different microchannels by controllably extruding sacrificial molds is a promising supplement to the existing fabrication methods for microfluidic devices
The results show that, microchannels with different structures and sizes can be arbitrarily combined into a single microfluidic device by controllably extruding the sacrificial molds

Summary

Introduction

Microfluidics [1], which can offer the controlled manipulation of fluids and particles at the micro domain, has been widely used in biological [2], medical [3], chemical [4] and environmental [5] fields, due to the advantages of low sample consumption, short processing time and high detection accuracy. The single-layer processing limitation of the photolithography makes it difficult to achieve an intricate 3D microchannel. These problems hinder the further popularization and application of soft lithography in microfluidics industry. It is difficult for these techniques to achieve a channel width less than 500 μm, and no 3D printing material has been found to be more suitable for microfluidic devices than PDMS [16]. The use of single extruded filament as sacrificial channel mold provides several other advantages: (i) the channel section can be changed by changing the orifice shapes in the printer nozzles [24], and (ii) the channel size can be flexibly adjusted by controlling the material extrusion amount [25]. To our best knowledge, the influence of extrusion parameters for fabricating filamentary channel mold has not been elaborately investigated up to now

Methods

Results

Conclusion