Simple 3D Printed Scaffold-Removal Method for the Fabrication of Intricate Microfluidic Devices.

Vittorio Saggiomo,Aldrik H Velders

doi:10.1002/advs.201500125

Abstract

An easy and cheap fabrication method for intricate polydimethylsiloxane microfluidic devices is presented. The acrylonitrile butadiene styrene scaffold-removal method uses cheap, off-the-shelf materials and equipment for the fabrication of intricate microfluidic devices. The versatility of the method is proven by the fabrication of 3D multilayer, ship-in-a-bottle, selective heating, sensing, and NMR microfluidic devices. The methodology is coined ESCARGOT: Embedded SCAffold RemovinG Open Technology.

Highlights

Microfluidics[1,2] is a continuously growing field, of great interest in chemistry,[3] physics,[4,5] drug discovery,[6] biology,[7,8] chemical biology,[9] biomedical research,[10] tissue engineering,[11] and most recently, organs-on-chip.[12]
The limitation of 3D printing directly the microfluidic devices lies mainly in the material used and, so far only one example of 3D printed PDMS membrane is present in literature with the limitation of using PDMS mixed with colored photoresist, not pure PDMS and giving non transparent devices.[28]
PDMS is usually preferred over other 3D printing plastics because of a) its gas permeability, useful in biology for keeping cells and bacteria alive for long time in the microfluidic chip; b) its elasticity, capable of making micro pumps and valves in the device and c) its simple chemical modification using well known silane chemistry, difficult thing to do on 3D printing plastics and d) its transparency

Summary

Introduction

Microfluidics[1,2] is a continuously growing field, of great interest in chemistry,[3] physics,[4,5] drug discovery,[6] biology,[7,8] chemical biology,[9] biomedical research,[10] tissue engineering,[11] and most recently, organs-on-chip.[12]. We show how, using the scaffold-removal fabrication method, external components, such as heating elements, electronics or RF circuitry, can be embedded directly in microfluidic devices.

Results

Conclusion