scholarly journals Fused Deposition Modeling of Microfluidic Chips in Polymethylmethacrylate

Micromachines ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 873 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederik Kotz ◽  
Markus Mader ◽  
Nils Dellen ◽  
Patrick Risch ◽  
Andrea Kick ◽  
...  

Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) is one of the most important thermoplastic materials and is a widely used material in microfluidics. However, PMMA is usually structured using industrial scale replication processes, such as hot embossing or injection molding, not compatible with rapid prototyping. In this work, we demonstrate that microfluidic chips made from PMMA can be 3D printed using fused deposition modeling (FDM). We demonstrate that using FDM microfluidic chips with a minimum channel cross-section of ~300 µm can be printed and a variety of different channel geometries and mixer structures are shown. The optical transparency of the chips is shown to be significantly enhanced by printing onto commercial PMMA substrates. The use of such commercial PMMA substrates also enables the integration of PMMA microstructures into the printed chips, by first generating a microstructure on the PMMA substrates, and subsequently printing the PMMA chip around the microstructure. We further demonstrate that protein patterns can be generated within previously printed microfluidic chips by employing a method of photobleaching. The FDM printing of microfluidic chips in PMMA allows the use of one of microfluidics’ most used industrial materials on the laboratory scale and thus significantly simplifies the transfer from results gained in the lab to an industrial product.

2019 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-87
Author(s):  
Wenqiong Su ◽  
Yulong Li ◽  
Lulu Zhang ◽  
Jiahui Sun ◽  
Shuopeng Liu ◽  
...  

Typography-like templates for polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microfluidic chips using a fused deposition modeling (FDM) three-dimensional (3D) printer are presented. This rapid and fast proposed scheme did not require complicated photolithographic fabrication facilities and could deliver resolutions of ~100 μm. Polylactic acid (PLA) was adopted as the material to generate the 3D-printed units, which were then carefully assembled on a glass substrate using a heat-melt-curd strategy. This craft of bonding offers a cost-effective way to design and modify the templates of microfluidic channels, thus reducing the processing time of microfluidic chips. Finally, a flexible microfluidic chip to be employed for cell-based drug screening was developed based on the modularized 3D-printed templates. The lithography-free, typography-like, 3D-printed templates create a modularized fabrication process and promote the prevalence of integrated microfluidic systems with minimal requirements and improved efficiency.


2016 ◽  
Vol 706 ◽  
pp. 63-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pritish Shubham ◽  
Arnab Sikidar ◽  
Teg Chand

3D Printed ABS polymer samples were investigated for understanding the effect of layer thickness on the various mechanical properties of the component. Standard samples with varying layer thickness were prepared by 3D printing machine which works on the principle of Fused Deposition modeling (FDM) method and compared with sample prepared by standard injection molding method. Results show that tensile strength (36 MPa), impact strength (103.6 J/m) and hardness (R107) were highest for the samples made by injection molding method. Furthermore, among 3D printed samples, properties were better with smaller layer thickness. With increase in layer thickness, there was negative effect on mechanical properties as tensile strength, impact strength and hardness decreased. Exception with hardness of 3D printed ABS samples was found; for largest layer thickness hardness further increased instead of decreasing.


Author(s):  
Michael A. Luzuriaga ◽  
Danielle R. Berry ◽  
John C. Reagan ◽  
Ronald A. Smaldone ◽  
Jeremiah J. Gassensmith

Biodegradable polymer microneedle (MN) arrays are an emerging class of transdermal drug delivery devices that promise a painless and sanitary alternative to syringes; however, prototyping bespoke needle architectures is expensive and requires production of new master templates. Here, we present a new microfabrication technique for MNs using fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing using polylactic acid, an FDA approved, renewable, biodegradable, thermoplastic material. We show how this natural degradability can be exploited to overcome a key challenge of FDM 3D printing, in particular the low resolution of these printers. We improved the feature size of the printed parts significantly by developing a post fabrication chemical etching protocol, which allowed us to access tip sizes as small as 1 μm. With 3D modeling software, various MN shapes were designed and printed rapidly with custom needle density, length, and shape. Scanning electron microscopy confirmed that our method resulted in needle tip sizes in the range of 1 – 55 µm, which could successfully penetrate and break off into porcine skin. We have also shown that these MNs have comparable mechanical strengths to currently fabricated MNs and we further demonstrated how the swellability of PLA can be exploited to load small molecule drugs and how its degradability in skin can release those small molecules over time.


AIP Advances ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 025223
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Calascione ◽  
Nathan A. Fischer ◽  
Thomas J. Lee ◽  
Hannah G. Thatcher ◽  
Brittany B. Nelson-Cheeseman

Polymers ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 1275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Ehrmann ◽  
Andrea Ehrmann

Poly(lactic acid) is not only one of the most often used materials for 3D printing via fused deposition modeling (FDM), but also a shape-memory polymer. This means that objects printed from PLA can, to a certain extent, be deformed and regenerate their original shape automatically when they are heated to a moderate temperature of about 60–100 °C. It is important to note that pure PLA cannot restore broken bonds, so that it is necessary to find structures which can take up large forces by deformation without full breaks. Here we report on the continuation of previous tests on 3D-printed cubes with different infill patterns and degrees, now investigating the influence of the orientation of the applied pressure on the recovery properties. We find that for the applied gyroid pattern, indentation on the front parallel to the layers gives the worst recovery due to nearly full layer separation, while indentation on the front perpendicular to the layers or diagonal gives significantly better results. Pressing from the top, either diagonal or parallel to an edge, interestingly leads to a different residual strain than pressing from front, with indentation on top always firstly leading to an expansion towards the indenter after the first few quasi-static load tests. To quantitatively evaluate these results, new measures are suggested which could be adopted by other groups working on shape-memory polymers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (15) ◽  
pp. 6946
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Podsiadły ◽  
Andrzej Skalski ◽  
Wiktor Rozpiórski ◽  
Marcin Słoma

In this paper, we are focusing on comparing results obtained for polymer elements manufactured with injection molding and additive manufacturing techniques. The analysis was performed for fused deposition modeling (FDM) and single screw injection molding with regards to the standards used in thermoplastics processing technology. We argue that the cross-section structure of the sample obtained via FDM is the key factor in the fabrication of high-strength components and that the dimensions of the samples have a strong influence on the mechanical properties. Large cross-section samples, 4 × 10 mm2, with three perimeter layers and 50% infill, have lower mechanical strength than injection molded reference samples—less than 60% of the strength. However, if we reduce the cross-section dimensions down to 2 × 4 mm2, the samples will be more durable, reaching up to 110% of the tensile strength observed for the injection molded samples. In the case of large cross-section samples, strength increases with the number of contour layers, leading to an increase of up to 97% of the tensile strength value for 11 perimeter layer samples. The mechanical strength of the printed components can also be improved by using lower values of the thickness of the deposited layers.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002199832098856
Author(s):  
Marcela Piassi Bernardo ◽  
Bruna Cristina Rodrigues da Silva ◽  
Luiz Henrique Capparelli Mattoso

Injured bone tissues can be healed with scaffolds, which could be manufactured using the fused deposition modeling (FDM) strategy. Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is one of the most biocompatible polymers suitable for FDM, while hydroxyapatite (HA) could improve the bioactivity of scaffold due to its chemical composition. Therefore, the combination of PLA/HA can create composite filaments adequate for FDM and with high osteoconductive and osteointegration potentials. In this work, we proposed a different approache to improve the potential bioactivity of 3D printed scaffolds for bone tissue engineering by increasing the HA loading (20-30%) in the PLA composite filaments. Two routes were investigated regarding the use of solvents in the filament production. To assess the suitability of the FDM-3D printing process, and the influence of the HA content on the polymer matrix, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were performed. The HA phase content of the composite filaments agreed with the initial composite proportions. The wettability of the 3D printed scaffolds was also increased. It was shown a greener route for obtaining composite filaments that generate scaffolds with properties similar to those obtained by the solvent casting, with high HA content and great potential to be used as a bone graft.


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