3D printed microfluidics for biological applications

Abstract

The term "Lab-on-a-Chip," is synonymous with describing microfluidic devices with biomedical applications. Even though microfluidics have been developing rapidly over the past decade, the uptake rate in biological research has been slow. This could be due to the tedious process of fabricating a chip and the absence of a "killer application" that would outperform existing traditional methods. In recent years, three dimensional (3D) printing has been drawing much interest from the research community. It has the ability to make complex structures with high resolution. Moreover, the fast building time and ease of learning has simplified the fabrication process of microfluidic devices to a single step. This could possibly aid the field of microfluidics in finding its "killer application" that will lead to its acceptance by researchers, especially in the biomedical field. In this paper, a review is carried out of how 3D printing helps to improve the fabrication of microfluidic devices, the 3D printing technologies currently used for fabrication and the future of 3D printing in the field of microfluidics.

Open-source, community-driven microfluidics with Metafluidics

“…The advent of soft lithography was a groundbreaking enabling technology Open-source, community-driven microfluidics with Metafluidics p e r s p e c t i v e for microfluidics 20 , but photolithography requirements-from clean rooms to technology for silicon processing-still present a substantial obstacle for both developers and users. Increasingly, commodity digital fabrication technologies like three-dimensional (3D) printing 21 are being used to manufacture molds for soft lithography 22 and milli-and microfluidic systems 23,24 , including programmable valves 25 and devices for synthetic biology applications 26 . Crucially, 3D printing eliminates the photolithographic step and obviates the need for expensive silicon-processing infrastructure.…”

Grown, Printed, and Biologically Augmented: An Additively Manufactured Microfluidic Wearable, Functionally Templated for Synthetic Microbes

“…4 While 3D printing has been previously demonstrated as a viable means for the production of bespoke wearable-scale products, 5 this technology has not previously been used to print a wearable with an inner fluidic network. Until recently, additive manufacturing has been utilized to produce microfluidic devices, 6 but only in a single material and/or typically at a small scale-usually below feature sizes of 10 cm-when compared to the scale of a typical wearable. Mushtari is the first of its kind fluidic device with channels as thin as 1 mm in diameter.…”

Post-printing surface modification and functionalization of 3D-printed biomedical device

“…These devices are designed to temporarily or permanently replace damaged tissues or organs in the living body. The third category is in vitro biomedical platform such as microfluidic systems for molecular diagnostics and functional cell assays [16][17][18][19][20][21] . Currently, much effort in biomedical 3D printing has been devoted to creating desired 3D architecture.…”