Room temperature roll-to-roll additive manufacturing of polydimethylsiloxane-based centrifugal microfluidic device for on-site isolation of ribonucleic acid from whole blood

Abstract

Polymer-based lab-on-a-disc (LoaD) devices for isolating ribonucleic acid (RNA) from whole blood samples have gained considerable attention for accurate biomedical analysis and point-of-care diagnostics. However, the mass production of these devices remains challenging in manufacturing cost and sustainability, primarily due to the utilization of a laser cutter or router computer numerical control (CNC) machine for engraving and cutting plastics in the conventional prototyping process. Herein, we reported the first energy-efficient room-temperature printing-imprinting integrated roll-to-roll manufacturing platform for mass production of a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-based LoaD to on-site isolate ribonucleic acid (RNA) from undiluted blood samples. We significantly reduced energy consumption and eliminated thermal expansion variations between the mold, substrate, and resists by accelerating the PDMS curing time to less than 10 min at room temperature without using heat or ultraviolet radiation. The additive manufacturing technology was applied to fabricate a multi-depth flexible polymer mold that integrated macro (2 mm) and micro-sized (500 μm) features, which overcomes the economic and environmental challenges of conventional molding techniques. Our integrated R2R platform was enabled to print adhesion-promoting films at the first printing unit and continuously in-line imprint with a high replication accuracy (99%) for high-volume manufacturing of a new centrifugal microfluidic chip with an enhancement of mixing performance by integrating an efficient mixing chamber and serpentine micromixer. This research paved the way for scalable green manufacturing of large-volume polymer-based microfluidic devices, often required in real-world sample-driven analytical systems for clinical bioanalysis.