3D-Printed Microfluidics
By Anthony K. Au, W. Huynh, L. Horowitz, Albert Folch. Angewandte Chemie, 2016
737 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The advent of soft lithography allowed for an unprecedented expansion in the field of microfluidics. However, the vast majority of PDMS microfluidic devices are still made with extensive manual labor, are tethered to bulky control systems, and have cumbersome user interfaces, all of which makes commercialization difficult. On the other hand, the “3D-printing revolution” has begun to embrace the range of sizes and materials that appeal to microfluidic developers. Prior to fabrication, a design is digitally built as a detailed 3D CAD file. The design can be assembled in modules by remotely collaborating teams, and its mechanical and fluidic behavior can be simulated using finite-element modeling. Because structures are created by adding materials without the need for etching or dissolution, processing is environmentally and economically efficient. We predict that in the next few years, 3D-printing will replace most PDMS and plastic molding techniques in academia.
Subfields: Biomedical Engineering
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/856a0b958176405d0a574b0c6e008e6aa1673168
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In Biomedical Engineering
Citations in the corpus
- A Review of Current Methods in Microfluidic Device Fabrication and Future Commercialization Prospects (2018, methodology): “In another modification of FDM, liquid precursors are extruded through the nozzle without heating, which may be used as an inexpensive way to incorporate a variety of sensors and valves within microfluidic devices [39].”