Characterization of 3D-Printed Moulds for Soft Lithography of Millifluidic Devices

Increased demand for inexpensive and rapid prototyping methods for micro- and millifluidic lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices has stimulated considerable interest in alternative cost-effective fabrication techniques. Additive manufacturing (AM)-also called three-dimensional (3D) printing-provides an attrac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMicromachines (Basel) Vol. 9; no. 3; p. 116
Main Authors Mohd Fuad, Nurul, Carve, Megan, Kaslin, Jan, Wlodkowic, Donald
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Switzerland MDPI AG 08.03.2018
MDPI
Subjects
Biocompatibility
biodevices
biotests
Elastomers
Lab-on-a-Chip
Lithography
material jetting
millifluidic
Molding (process)
Molds
Polydimethylsiloxane
Printers
Rapid prototyping
Silicone resins
soft lithography
stereolithography
Technical Note
Three dimensional printing
Toxicity
Zebrafish
biotests
Lab-on-a-Chip
polydimethylsiloxane
stereolithography
millifluidic
material jetting
biodevices
soft lithography
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Summary:Increased demand for inexpensive and rapid prototyping methods for micro- and millifluidic lab-on-a-chip (LOC) devices has stimulated considerable interest in alternative cost-effective fabrication techniques. Additive manufacturing (AM)-also called three-dimensional (3D) printing-provides an attractive alternative to conventional fabrication techniques. AM has been used to produce LOC master moulds from which positive replicas are made using soft-lithography and a biocompatible elastomer, poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS). Here we characterize moulds made using two AM methods-stereolithography (SLA) and material-jetting (MJ)-and the positive replicas produced by soft lithography and PDMS moulding. The results showed that SLA, more than MJ, produced finer part resolution and finer tuning of feature geometry. Furthermore, as assessed by zebrafish ( ) biotoxicity tests, there was no toxicity observed in SLA and MJ moulded PDMS replicas. We conclude that SLA, utilizing commercially available printers and resins, combined with PDMS soft-lithography, is a simple and easily accessible technique that lends its self particularly well to the fabrication of biocompatible millifluidic devices, highly suited to the in-situ analysis of small model organisms.
ISSN:2072-666X
2072-666X
DOI:10.3390/mi9030116