Can DLP Be Used in the Creation of Microfluidic Chips?

Medical applications in 3D printing are vast and growing larger by the day. One that is increasingly important, but perhaps less discussed, centers on microfluidics. Microfluidic devices (microfluidic chips) have emerged over the past 30 years and have been rapidly integrated into many different biomedical applications including but not limited to cancer research, drug screening, drug delivery and molecular diagnostics. And, additive manufacturing is also being used to produce the important devices, with a recent research paper from the Faculty of Pharmacy at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece showing how DLP could be used for their fabrication.

As mentioned, microfluidic devices have been gaining in popularity in recent years. But what exactly are these? Well, microfluidics refers to the manipulation of fluids at a microscopic scale. It allows for fast responses, minimal sample consumption and high throughput. Meanwhile, microfluidic devices, namely microfluidic chips, are a set of micro-channels that have been etched or molded into a material. Traditionally, devices in microfluidics are made of glass, silicon and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Yet increasingly they are also being made with AM.

The microfluidic device made by the researchers

Previously, only Stereolithography (SLA) and Two Photo Polymerization (2PP) have been used thanks to their precision and ability to produce parts with small dimensions. But those are no longer the only options. In the study “Fabrication of a microfluidic device using Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D printing,” Eleftherios Andriotis, Paraskevi Kyriaki Monou and Dimitrios Fatouros have outlined how to fabricate a microfluidic device with Digital Light Processing (DLP). The researchers were able to accomplish this task with the help of Lino3D, a well-known 3D printing lab based in Greece.