Precision Manufacturing of Polymeric Microfluidic Devices: Progress from Fast Prototyping Using High Precision DLP Printing and Defect-Free Production via Self-Lubricating Mould Technology
Nan Zhang,
Associate Professor,
University College Dublin
Microfluidic devices have been used in point-of-care diagnostics, drug development and life science research. After more than 40 years development, microfluidic technology has been becoming a platform technology and reforming the development of the future generation in-vitro diagnostics, bio-pharma and life science. In comparison to the increasing development of advanced applications using microfluidic as a technical base, the manufacturing processes of microfluidic devices is still constrained by the tedious prototyping, which is still time consuming and requires specialized equipment. During production stage, for the high density and high aspect ratio micro structures, demoulding can cause feature damage or distortion, and thus affect the subsequent bonding and overall chip functionality. In the present talk, I would like to share our current progress on high precision prototyping of microfluidics devices by 3D printing based on Digital Light Processing technology, and showcase complex channel 3D printing and hybrid 3D features inside of 2.5D micro channel. Additionally, I would also like to talk about our newly developed novel self-lubricating micro/nano mold technology for defects-free production of plastic microfluidic devices. The demonstration will be highlighted for testing star patterns and microfluidic devices.
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