Abstract
State-of-the-art microfluidic systems rely on relatively expensive and bulky off-chip infrastructures. The core of a system—the microfluidic chip—requires a clean room and dedicated skills to be fabricated. Thus, state-of-the-art microfluidic systems are barely accessible, especially for the do-it-yourself (DIY) community or enthusiasts. Recent emerging technology—3D-printing—has shown promise to fabricate microfluidic chips more simply, but the resulting chip is mainly hardened and single-layered and can hardly replace the state-of-the-art Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip. There exists no convenient fluidic control mechanism yet suitable for the hardened single-layered chip, and particularly, the hardened single-layered chip cannot replicate the pneumatic valve—an essential actuator for automatically controlled microfluidics. Instead, 3D-printable non-pneumatic or manually actuated valve designs are reported, but their application is limited. Here, we present a low-cost accessible all-in-one portable microfluidic system, which uses an easy-to-print single-layered 3D-printed microfluidic chip along with a novel active control mechanism for fluids to enable more applications. This active control mechanism is based on air or gas interception and can, e.g., block, direct, and transport fluid. As a demonstration, we show the system can automatically control the fluid in microfluidic chips, which we designed and printed with a consumer-grade 3D-printer. The system is comparably compact and can automatically perform user-programmed experiments. All operations can be done directly on the system with no additional host device required. This work could support the spread of low budget accessible microfluidic systems as portable, usable on-the-go devices and increase the application field of 3D-printed microfluidic devices.
Highlights
During the past few decades, microfluidics has become more and more important in the fields of b iology[1,2] and chemistry[3]
A similar design was proposed by Li et al, where microcontrollers are used to control a miniature DC diaphragm pump and small solenoid valves[12]. Both of the proposed designs of handheld or portable microfluidic control systems reduced the size of certain off-chip infrastructures and are applicable to drive elastic PDMS-membrane microfluidics or pressure-driven microfluidics
We have demonstrated the operation of this all-in-one portable microfluidic system with 3D-printed single-layer chips using our proposed control mechanism
Summary
During the past few decades, microfluidics has become more and more important in the fields of b iology[1,2] and chemistry[3]. Most lab-on-a-chip systems heavily rely on bulky off-chip infrastructures such as compressed pressure sources, syringe pumps, and desktop computers to achieve controlled fluid manipulation functions. These infrastructures are relatively expensive and not handy and accessible[11]. A similar design was proposed by Li et al, where microcontrollers are used to control a miniature DC diaphragm pump and small solenoid valves[12] Both of the proposed designs of handheld or portable microfluidic control systems reduced the size of certain off-chip infrastructures and are applicable to drive elastic PDMS-membrane microfluidics or pressure-driven microfluidics. To operate these systems, a host device, such as a computer or smartphone, is required to send operations to the system, while the user needs to operate manually on the host device to, e.g., control each pressure source one-by-one
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
