Prototyping of microfluidic chips poses several challenges to Chinese prototype manufacturers. Traditional fabrication techniques such as injection molding, milling, bonding, etc. are extremely slow as well as expensive for the modern requirements, whereas the more advanced 3D printers are not accurate enough to come up with sealed devices that can cope with the high pressures that they are exposed to.
The even bigger problem at hand is that microfluidics is one of the fastest upcoming industries in the world at present, which has caused a steady rise in the number of rapid prototyping companies in China. Applications such as organ-on-a-chip, drug development, analytics, etc. pose a big challenge to prototype makers in China: to replace existing technologies and complement them with more rapid and effective 3D printing to create fluidically-sealed devices of the highest quality.
VIABLE OPTIONS AND THE CHALLENGES THAT THEY POSE
The most commonly used methods of prototyping microfluidic devices are clean room-based microfabrication techniques such as lithography and are one of the most accurate methods used by prototype companies in China. But what these methods earn in quality, they lack in their feasibility.
In the late ‘90’s though, a research group at Harvard came up with a rapid prototyping journal that allowed for PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane-silicon rubber) to be used as an alternative material that solved the problem of the channel that used to be left open without a lid previously and this alternative has served as the backbone of the microfluidics industry for a long time now.
Recently, however, a more viable option has emerged in the industry- 3D printing. 3D printing techniques have started to gain traction owing to their sophisticated techniques and their ability to replicate designs really fast, efficiently, and in a cost-effective manner. However, the problem that rapid prototyping services in China face is that when it comes specifically to microfluidics and its applications, 3D printing starts becoming a headache. Even though 3D printing makes use of sophisticated methods such as SLA (Stereo Lithography), SLS (Selective Laser Sintering), FDM (Fused Deposition Modeling), etc. these methods tend to not work efficiently in microfluid applications mostly due to the fact that the voids get filled with the material used in the design. Chinese prototype makers have solved one problem in microfluid chip prototyping though; through SLA or SLS technique, the necessary support is provided by photopolymers to ensure that the printed lid does not collapse under its own weight but another problem persists: the material flowing into the channels and this is a problem that has proven to be impossible to fix till date.
To solve this very problem, prototype factories in China are looking to use FDM techniques to address the same. 3D printers have been modified and fitted with Cyclic Olefin Copolymer which is transparent in nature, thus allowing to see through the internal structure and observe where the material is filling up and accordingly come with precise geometric calculations to engineer microfluid chips of the highest quality.
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Resource box: This article is originally posted in https://www.rapidprototypechina.com.