Chang Yu, Wang Can, Du Ke
Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Riverside, CA 92521, USA.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY 14623, USA.
Sens Actuators Rep. 2024 Dec;8. doi: 10.1016/j.snr.2024.100227. Epub 2024 Jul 20.
High resolution 3D printing emerges as an alternative to microfabrication due to its fine resolution along with one-step manufacturing. Thus, it is broadly used in many fields, such as biological and chemical applications. We introduce such a technique to the design of the optofluidic probe by integrating optics and microfluidics as an ex vivo liquid core fiber photometry. We build the optofluidic probes with various T-shapes and conduct the transmission measurements and the ray tracing simulations, where the results are comparable. Through the transmission and fluorescence measurements, we obtain optimized curl T-shape dimensions of 524 μm wide, ~50 μm thick, and 350 μm long with longitudinal spaces between them of 260 um. Furthermore, a heightened level of complexity in structure, characterized by a feature size of 25 μm, is attained through the improvement process. We conclude the feasibility of this optofluidic system with two applications: the in vivo-like setting consisting of thyroid biopsy training phantom and human plasma and the ex vivo-like setting consisting of the mice brain slices stained with wheat germ agglutinin (WGA). This prototype is an important step of establishing a 3D printing optofluidic applications for various in vivo research.
高分辨率3D打印因其精细分辨率和一步制造工艺而成为微制造的一种替代方法。因此，它被广泛应用于许多领域，如生物和化学应用。我们将这种技术引入到光流控探针的设计中，通过整合光学和微流体技术，实现离体液芯光纤光度测量。我们构建了各种T形的光流控探针，并进行了传输测量和光线追踪模拟，结果具有可比性。通过传输和荧光测量，我们获得了优化的卷曲T形尺寸，宽度为524μm，厚度约为50μm，长度为350μm，它们之间的纵向间距为260μm。此外，通过改进工艺，实现了结构复杂度的提高，特征尺寸为25μm。我们通过两种应用验证了这种光流控系统的可行性：一种是类似体内的环境，由甲状腺活检训练模型和人体血浆组成；另一种是类似离体的环境，由用麦胚凝集素（WGA）染色的小鼠脑切片组成。这个原型是为各种体内研究建立3D打印光流控应用的重要一步。
