DIY 3D Microparticle Generation from Next Generation Optofluidic Fabrication

Paulsen, Kevin S.; Deng, Yanxiang; Chung, Aram J.

doi:10.1002/advs.201800252

Cited by 25 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 31 publications

(40 reference statements)

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“…[18,19] A range of fabrication methodologies have been explored over the past decade to create particles with different shapes and functionalities using continuous [20][21][22][23][24] or stop flow lithography techniques [25][26][27][28] combined with hydrodynamic focusing, [29][30][31][32] magnetically tunable color printing, [12,33] vertical flows, [34] structured hollow fibers [35] or inertial forces. [36][37][38][39] Particles comprised of layers of hydrophobic and hydrophilic materials were shown to selectively interact and assemble around aqueous drops. [22,40] However, these approaches either do not hold a uniform volume of a compartmentalized aqueous phase [22] or suffer from a low throughput and complicated fabrication workflow (Table S1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation of uniform reaction volumes using concentric amphiphilic microparticles

Destgeer

Ouyang²,

Wu³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Reactions performed in uniform microscale volumes have enabled numerous applications in the analysis of rare entities (e.g. cells and molecules), however, sophisticated instruments are usually required to form large numbers of uniform compartments. Here, uniform aqueous droplets are formed by simply mixing microscale multi-material particles, consisting of concentric hydrophobic outer and hydrophilic inner layers, with oil and water. The particles are manufactured in batch using a 3D printed device to co-flow four concentric streams of polymer precursors which are polymerized with UV light. The size of the particles is readily controlled by adjusting the fluid flow rate ratios and mask design; whereas the cross-sectional shapes are altered by microfluidic nozzle design in the 3D printed device. Once a particle encapsulates an aqueous volume, each "dropicle" provides uniform compartmentalization and customizable shape-coding for each sample volume to enable multiplexing of uniform reactions in a scalable manner. We implement an enzymatically-amplified affinity assay using the dropicle system, yielding a detection limit of <1 pM with a dynamic range of at least 3 orders of magnitude. Moreover, multiplexing using two types of shape-coded particles was demonstrated without cross talk, laying a foundation for democratized single-entity assays.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Formation of uniform reaction volumes using concentric amphiphilic microparticles

Destgeer

Ouyang²,

Wu³

et al. 2020

Preprint

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“…2 Advanced manufacturing processes are also enabled, with continuous-flow lithography creating multi-material polymers with 3D cross-sections, altering their mechanical or functional properties. 3 This can be extended via stop-flow like processes to create shaped 3D particles at millimeter 4 and micrometer 5,6 scales, which have applications in cell culture and analysis, tissue engineering, protein analysis, and additive manufacturing. 7 We envision future use of flow sculpting in biology and chemistry related applications by utilizing its unique ability to passively manipulate the cross-sectional distribution of fluid elements.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A clear example of this difficulty is particle fabrication via flow sculpting, which remains competitive with state-of-the-art methods such as PRINT, 12 SEAL, 13 two-photon lithography, 14 and hollow fiber templating 15 due to the ability to create multi-material shaped 3D particles at high-throughput using basic microfluidic tools such as soft lithography 16 and 3D printing. 6 However, the flow sculpting approaches currently require the target 3D particle shape to comprise of the intersection of two orthogonally extruded 2D shapes: one from the shape of the sculpted flow stream (which contains a polymer precursor with a photoinitiator), and the other from an optical mask (which shapes polymerizing ultraviolet light). Such 3D particle shapes are thus limited not only to what is physically possible through inertial flow sculpting, but more practically, to a designer's ability to correctly arrange a sequence of pillars and inlet flow pattern to sculpt a desired cross-sectional flow shape.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

FlowSculpt: software for efficient design of inertial flow sculpting devices

et al. 2019

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“…While flow‐lithography based particle fabrication, in which photocurable polymers are flowed through a microfluidic chip and polymerized by UV light passing through a photomask, has shown to have excellent control of particle shape along a single 2D extrusion axis, a similar level of shape control in the direction of flow is yet to be achieved . In recent years, there have been efforts to improve the complexity of particles beyond 2D extruded shapes through techniques such as hydrodynamic flow shaping and nonuniform flow lithography . However, the mechanisms enabling these methods, or inertial focusing and nonuniform UV light intensity, are not precise and are difficult to control, limiting particle shape design freedom.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Designable 3D Microshapes Fabricated at the Intersection of Structured Flow and Optical Fields

Yuan

Nagarajan

Lee

et al. 2018

Small

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of applications, including drug delivery, tissue engineering, self-assembly, and photonics. For example, the shape of hydrogel particles has been shown to affect particle-cell interactions [1][2][3] and the cross-sectional shape of microfibers changes the wicking properties of woven fabrics. [4] In addition, microobjects in nature often take on a nonequilibrium structure to exploit beneficial shapeinduced functionality, such as the biconcave geometry of the red blood cell and the triangular cross-section of Saharan silver ant fibers. [5] Existing techniques to fabricate microobjects with 3D architectures have tradeoffs between throughput and shape selection. Conventional layer-by-layer 3D printing techniques based on fused deposition modelling and stereolithography are resolution-limited, with minimum linear feature sizes of over 45 µm. [6] High-resolution 3D printing methods, such as two-photon polymerization, can produce feature sizes as low as 40 nm, but their low print speed makes them unfeasible for production at scale [7] and their small build volumes are unsuitable for fabricating high aspect ratio microobjects such as fibers. Top-down approaches to particle fabrication, such as PRINT [8] and SEAL, [9] are high throughput, but cannot produce 3D shapes beyond stacked 2D extrusions because they utilize polymeric molds of microfabricated templates. Microfluidic approaches to nonequilibrium particle and fiber synthesis also have a limited library of possible 3D geometries. Droplet-based approaches to nonspherical particle fabrication are restricted to creating particles with equilibrium surface features because the factors that determine the shape of the interface between immiscible fluids are surface tension dominated. [10][11][12][13][14] While flow-lithography based particle fabrication, in which photocurable polymers are flowed through a microfluidic chip and polymerized by UV light passing through a photomask, has shown to have excellent control of particle shape along a single 2D extrusion axis, [15][16][17] a similar level of shape control in the direction of flow is yet to be achieved. [18][19][20] In recent years, there have been efforts to improve the complexity of particles beyond 2D extruded shapes through techniques such as hydrodynamic flow shaping [21][22][23] and nonuniform flow lithography. [24,25] However, the mechanisms enabling these methods, or inertial focusing and nonuniform UV light intensity, are not precise and are difficult to control, limiting particle shape design freedom.3D structures with complex geometric features at the microscale, such as microparticles and microfibers, have promising applications in biomedical engineering, self-assembly, and photonics. Fabrication of complex 3D microshapes at scale poses a unique challenge; high-resolution methods such as two-photon-polymerization have print speeds too low for high-throughput production, while top-down approaches for bulk processing using microfabricated template molds have limited control of microstructure geometries over mu...

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DIY 3D Microparticle Generation from Next Generation Optofluidic Fabrication

Cited by 25 publications

References 31 publications

Formation of uniform reaction volumes using concentric amphiphilic microparticles

Formation of uniform reaction volumes using concentric amphiphilic microparticles

FlowSculpt: software for efficient design of inertial flow sculpting devices

Designable 3D Microshapes Fabricated at the Intersection of Structured Flow and Optical Fields

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