Abstract
Widely accessible, inexpensive, easy-to-use consumer 3D printers, such as desktop stereolithography (SLA) and fused-deposition modeling (FDM) systems are increasingly employed in prototyping and customizing miniaturized fluidic systems for diagnostics and research. However, these 3D printers are generally limited to printing parts made of only one material type, which limits the functionality of the microfluidic devices without additional assembly and bonding steps. Moreover, mating of different materials requires good sealing in such microfluidic devices. Here, we report methods to print hybrid structures comprising a hard, rigid component (clear polymethacrylate polymer) printed by a low-cost SLA printer, and where the first printed part is accurately mated and adhered to a second, soft, flexible component (thermoplastic polyurethane elastomer) printed by an FDM printer. The prescribed mounting and alignment of the first-printed SLA-printed hard component, and its pre-treatment and heating during the second FDM step, can produce leak-free bonds at material interfaces. To demonstrate the utility of such hybrid 3D-printing, we prototype and test three components: i) finger-actuated pump, ii) quick-connect fluid coupler, and iii) nucleic acid amplification test device with screw-type twist sealing for sample introduction.
Highlights
Since the advent of the allied fields of lab-on-a-chip (LOC), microfluidics, and point-of-care (POC) diagnostics close to 30 years ago, there has been a considerable worldwide effort to develop microfluidic-based devices for medical diagnostics tests and other portable, miniaturized assays for use outside of laboratories [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
It is often desirable for the materials to be transparent to facilitate on-chip optical measurements, including UV and short optical wavelengths (350–500 nm) as needed for fluorescence detection, which further requires low background fluorescence. 3D-printed microfluidic devices must be compatible with operating temperatures that may be as high as 100 ◦ C
To fabricate the soft/flexible parts, the hard SLA-printed parts of the microfluidic devices were mounted with a high-temperature adhesive to attach their bases to a glass plate
Summary
Since the advent of the allied fields of lab-on-a-chip (LOC), microfluidics, and point-of-care (POC) diagnostics close to 30 years ago, there has been a considerable worldwide effort to develop microfluidic-based devices for medical diagnostics tests and other portable, miniaturized assays for use outside of laboratories [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. With 3D printing, microfluidic device engineers can use computer-aided design (CAD) software to specify part geometry, and print working prototypes suitable for testing within a ~24-h cycle. For microfluidics applications, it is often desirable for the materials to be transparent to facilitate on-chip optical measurements, including UV and short optical wavelengths (350–500 nm) as needed for fluorescence detection, which further requires low background (auto) fluorescence. We described a two-stage 3D printing process to produce hybrid microfluidic devices incorporating both hard and soft materials using inexpensive 3D consumer printers. Thyphi) DNA by loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) [25]
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