Fluidtronics: 3D-Printed Microfluidic Transistors and Higher-Complexity Circuits
Albert Folch,
Professor of Bioengineering,
University of Washington
Microfluidic automation has become an essential technology in fields such as genomics, proteomics, pharmaceutical testing, cell biology, tissue engineering, and organs-on-chips. However, as the experimental complexity increases, the complexity of the off-chip controls also increases. Paradoxically, a lab-on-a-chip becomes a less efficient “chip in a lab”. To address this “chip-in-a-lab” paradox, microfluidic researchers have borrowed from microelectronics the powerful formalism of microfluidic logic gates (µFLGs), typically built with PDMS valves that act as “microfluidic transistors”. However, the manufacturing challenges of soft-lithography techniques (e.g., cost, labor, expertise) significantly limit the large-scale democratization of microfluidic transistor technology among interested researchers and users. We describe stereolithography (SLA) resins that allow for emulating the elasticity properties of PDMS and SLA-print microfluidic transistors and analog fluidic amplifiers with characteristics similar to those built PDMS transistors. This work is the first step towards advanced-manufactured autonomous microfluidic transistor-based circuits and integrated controls that we call “Fluidtronics."
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