Fundamentals of rapid injection molding for microfluidic cell-based assays

Abstract

Microscale cell-based assays have demonstrated unique capabilities in reproducing important cellular behaviors for diagnostics and basic biological research. As these assays move beyond the prototyping stage and into biological and clinical research environments, there is a need to produce microscale culture platforms more rapidly, cost-effectively, and reproducibly. 'Rapid' injection molding is poised to meet this need as it enables some of the benefits of traditional high volume injection molding at a fraction of the cost. However, rapid injection molding has limitations due to the material and methods used for mold fabrication. Here, we characterize advantages and limitations of rapid injection molding for microfluidic device fabrication through measurement of key features for cell culture applications including channel geometry, feature consistency, floor thickness, and surface polishing. We demonstrate phase contrast and fluorescence imaging of cells grown in rapid injection molded devices and provide design recommendations to successfully utilize rapid injection molding methods for microscale cell-based assay development in academic laboratory settings.

Coupling 3D Printing and Novel Replica Molding for In House Fabrication of Skeletal Muscle Tissue Engineering Devices

“…The structures realized with the Direct Peeling method can be produced with other fabrication techniques, such as milling [ 19 ] or injection molding, [ 27,28 ] thanks to their millimetric dimensions. However, 3D printing offers higher versatility, as the fabrication process can be fully tuned in house from design to manufacturing to fit different needs and possible new necessities naturally arising during research.…”

“…In this method, the intrinsic properties of 3D printing allowed a high degree of versatility compared to other techniques, such as injection molding, for the fabrication of the negative mold. In injection molding, [ 27,28 ] each variation on the design must be followed by the fabrication of a new metal mold, making the process expensive and not comparably versatile. The second device was intermediate sized, contained T‐shaped pillars, and was suitable for 24‐well plates.…”

Biofabrication Strategies and Engineered In Vitro Systems for Vascular Mechanobiology

“…Although focused applications and specialized methods have their distinct, important advantages, ideally they should not impede the rapid prototyping/manufacturing of on‐chip devices. Toward this goal, a few high‐throughput manufacturing processes have been implemented including laser‐cutting, [ 502,503 ] xurography, [ 504 ] micromilling, [ 505 ] and the aforementioned injection‐molding [ 506,507 ] to produce on‐chip devices but these methods are less common than soft‐lithography and 3D‐printing. In the future, researchers designing on‐chip devices must carefully consider the range of available fabrication technologies to ensure facile, scalable, and adaptable manufacturing of their devices.…”

Influence of Diamond-Like Carbon Coating on the Channel Deformation of Injection-Molded Microfluidic Chips during the Demolding Process

“…The channel size of the microfluidic chip is one of the key factors affecting its function; among them, the channel width is an important indicator of the molding quality [47]. Therefore, we need to investigate the width of the polymer channel before and after demolding.…”