Enabling Microfluidics: from Clean Rooms to Makerspaces

Walsh, David I.; Kong, David S.; Murthy, Shashi K.; Carr, Peter A.

doi:10.1016/j.tibtech.2017.01.001

Cited by 144 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Although this fabrication approach has been extremely useful over the last twenty years, challenges associated with master mold fabrication inhibited many groups from pursuing novel microtechnological innovations. [ 4 ] Si–Pr composite master molds are conventionally fabricated through photolithography in a cleanroom environment using the SU‐8 family of negative photoresists on silicon wafers. This type of fabrication requires user expertise to be successful as most of the steps are manual, are associated with high material and equipment costs, demand specialized facilities that may not be available to everyone, and are challenging for mass fabrication.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polycarbonate Heat Molding for Soft Lithography

Sönmez

Coyle

Taylor

et al. 2020

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wafers. This type of fabrication requires user expertise to be successful as most of the steps are manual, are associated with high material and equipment costs, demand specialized facilities that may not be available to everyone, and are challenging for mass fabrication. This creates a barrier for the utilization and adaptation of this technology especially for nonexperts and also can cause issues for the commercialization of the products fabricated through this approach. [5] Furthermore, soft lithography has also been challenging because of problems related to the properties of the master molds. The composite nature of Si-Pr master molds results in limited casting lifetime. The differences between the thermal expansion coefficient of the photoresist and the silicon layers result in thermal stress and consequent delamination after a number of heating-cooling cycles. [6] This issue becomes more prominent when thicker photoresist layers with high-aspect-ratio features are present in the master mold. Fabrication of Si-Pr master molds with highaspect-ratio features also poses additional problems such as the repeatability of the uniformity of spin-coating thickness, challenges associated with developing high-aspect ratio indentations (e.g., trenches), and poor adhesion between crosslinked photoresist and silicon wafers. Furthermore, damage can occur in high-aspect ratio features during the manual peeling of the cured PDMS from the mold, which is frequently experienced during the PDMS replica molding process. Such issues render Si-Pr master molds fragile and not particularly robust.To overcome the issues associated with Si-Pr master molds, several other master mold fabrication techniques have been used including mechanical micromilling and 3D printing. Mechanical micromilling allows for fabrication of high-resolution master molds on a diversity of substrates automatically through computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software and automated stages. [7] However, mechanical micromilling also requires sophisticated tools and expensive equipment, cannot be scaled up for mass production easily, and fabrication parameters are needed to be optimized for each substrate type and geometry. Also, the aspect ratio of the trenches and microwells are limited due to micro end mill failure [8] along with the inability of the milling process to produce sharp inner corners. [7] Another approach is 3D printing in the additive manufacturing domain, which has been improving its ability to create more complex master mold geometries with automation in shorter time periods. [9,10] However, this approach is limited in its feature Soft lithography enables rapid microfabrication of many types of micro systems by replica molding elastomers into master molds. However, master molds can be very costly, hard to fabricate, vulnerable to damage, and have limited casting life. Here, an approach for the multiplication of master molds into monolithic thermoplastic sheets for further soft lithographic fabrication is introduced. The technique is tested with ma...

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Polycarbonate Heat Molding for Soft Lithography

Sönmez

Coyle

Taylor

et al. 2020

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“…The number of leading companies and recognized start‐ups using microfluidics exceeded 1000 worldwide in 2019 11. Representative microfluidics‐based products are mainly found in two key fields of biotechnology, point‐of‐care (PoC) diagnostics and genomics 12–14. These include centrifugal microfluidic biochips for PoC diagnostics, single cell analysis systems for antibody discovery, fluorescent‐activated cell sorting systems for rare cells and enzyme activity, digital microfluidic‐based real‐time PCR systems, and droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) systems.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Fourth Decade of Microfluidics

Kong

Shum

Weitz

2020

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“…Building an open-source pneumatic microfluidic control system has three main advantages to both academic researcher and small companies. First, open source builds are flexible and can be easily modified for a laboratory's needs [30,36]. For instance, this paper describes two easily modified options from the base build in the Modification and Customization Section.…”

Section: Advantages Of An Open-source Buildmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Open-Source, Programmable Pneumatic Setup for Operation and Automated Control of Single- and Multi-Layer Microfluidic Devices

Brower

Puccinelli

Markin

et al. 2017

Preprint

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Microfluidic technologies have been used across diverse disciplines (e.g. high-throughput biological measurement, fluid physics, laboratory fluid manipulation) but widespread adoption has been limited due to the lack of openly disseminated resources that enable non-specialist labs to make and operate their own devices. Here, we report the open-source build of a pneumatic setup capable of operating both single and multilayer (Quake-style) microfluidic devices with programmable scripting automation. This setup can operate both simple and complex devices with 48 device valve control inputs and 18 sample inputs, with modular design for easy expansion, at a fraction of the cost of similar commercial solutions. We present a detailed step-by-step guide to building the pneumatic instrumentation, as well as instructions for custom device operation using our software, Geppetto, through an easy-to-use GUI for live on-chip valve actuation and a scripting system for experiment automation. We show robust valve actuation with near real-time software feedback and demonstrate use of the setup for high-throughput biochemical measurements on-chip. This open-source setup will enable specialists and novices alike to run microfluidic devices easily in their own laboratories.

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Enabling Microfluidics: from Clean Rooms to Makerspaces

Cited by 144 publications

References 52 publications

Polycarbonate Heat Molding for Soft Lithography

Polycarbonate Heat Molding for Soft Lithography

The Fourth Decade of Microfluidics

An Open-Source, Programmable Pneumatic Setup for Operation and Automated Control of Single- and Multi-Layer Microfluidic Devices

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