Khoo Harrison, Allen William Shaen, Arroyo-Currás Netzahualcóyotl, Hur Soojung Claire
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N Charles ST., Latrobe 105, Baltimore, MD, 21218, USA.
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Jul 31;14(1):17646. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-68761-5.
Microfluidic devices have immense potential for widespread community use, but a current bottleneck is the transition from research prototyping into mass production because the gold standard prototyping strategy is too costly and labor intensive when scaling up fabrication throughput. For increased throughput, it is common to mold devices out of thermoplastics due to low per-unit costs at high volumes. However, conventional fabrication methods have high upfront development expenses with slow mold fabrication methods that limit the speed of design evolution for expedited marketability. To overcome this limitation, we propose a rapid prototyping protocol to fabricate thermoplastic devices from a stereolithography (SLA) 3D printed template through intermediate steps akin to those employed in soft lithography. We apply this process towards the design of self-operating capillaric circuits, well suited for deployment as low-cost decentralized assays. Rapid development of these geometry- and material-dependent devices benefits from prototyping with thermoplastics. We validated the constructed capillaric circuits by performing an autonomous, pre-programmed, bead-based immunofluorescent assay for protein quantification. Overall, this prototyping method provides a valuable means for quickly iterating and refining microfluidic devices, paving the way for future scaling of production.
微流控设备在社区广泛应用方面具有巨大潜力，但目前的一个瓶颈是从研究原型向大规模生产的过渡，因为金标准原型制作策略在扩大制造产量时成本过高且劳动强度大。为了提高产量，由于高产量时单位成本低，通常用热塑性塑料模制设备。然而，传统制造方法前期开发费用高，模具制造方法缓慢，限制了设计演变速度，不利于快速推向市场。为克服这一限制，我们提出一种快速原型制作方案，通过类似于软光刻中使用的中间步骤，从立体光刻（SLA）3D打印模板制造热塑性塑料设备。我们将此工艺应用于自运行毛细管电路的设计，这种电路非常适合作为低成本的分散式检测方法进行部署。这些依赖几何形状和材料的设备的快速开发得益于热塑性塑料原型制作。我们通过执行基于珠子的自主预编程免疫荧光测定法进行蛋白质定量，验证了构建的毛细管电路。总体而言，这种原型制作方法为快速迭代和改进微流控设备提供了一种有价值的手段，为未来的大规模生产铺平了道路。
