Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, University of Maine, Orono, Maine, United States of America.
Sappi North America, Inc., Westbrook, Maine, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2020 Dec 28;15(12):e0244324. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244324. eCollection 2020.
Microfluidic technologies have enormous potential to offer breakthrough solutions across a wide range of applications. However, the rate of scale-up and commercialization of these technologies has lagged significantly behind promising breakthrough developments in the lab, due at least in part to the problems presented by transitioning from benchtop fabrication methods to mass-manufacturing. In this work, we develop and validate a method to create functional microfluidic prototype devices using 3D printed masters in an industrial-scale roll-to-roll continuous casting process. There were no significant difference in mixing performance between the roll-to-roll cast devices and the PDMS controls in fluidic mixing tests. Furthermore, the casting process provided information on the suitability of the prototype microfluidic patterns for scale-up. This work represents an important step in the realization of high-volume prototyping and manufacturing of microfluidic patterns for use across a broad range of applications.
微流控技术在广泛的应用中具有提供突破性解决方案的巨大潜力。然而，这些技术的规模化和商业化速度明显落后于实验室中 promising breakthrough developments，至少部分原因是从台式制造方法向大规模制造过渡所带来的问题。在这项工作中，我们开发并验证了一种使用 3D 打印模具在工业规模的卷对卷连续铸造过程中制造功能微流控原型设备的方法。在流体混合测试中，卷对卷铸造设备与 PDMS 对照之间的混合性能没有显著差异。此外，铸造过程提供了有关原型微流控图案是否适合规模化的信息。这项工作是实现用于广泛应用的微流控图案的批量原型制作和制造的重要一步。
