THESIS
2016
xx, 120 pages : illustrations (some color) ; 30 cm
Abstract
Additive manufacturing, commonly known as three-dimensional (3D) printing, is a group of technologies that build 3D objects through a layer-by-layer process. A complicated 3D object can be built in just one printing step, which allow researchers to quickly prototype the desired tools. However, 3D printing is only applicable on limited library of 3D printable materials and the properties of these modeling materials are usually not suitable for microfluidics and bioengineering applications. Therefore, this PhD thesis aims to provide solutions to apply 3D printing in microfluidics and bioengineering. There are four projects in the thesis, which can be classified into two parts.
In the first part, we utilized the 3D printer to accelerate and simplify the fabrication of microfluidic chip....[
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Additive manufacturing, commonly known as three-dimensional (3D) printing, is a group of technologies that build 3D objects through a layer-by-layer process. A complicated 3D object can be built in just one printing step, which allow researchers to quickly prototype the desired tools. However, 3D printing is only applicable on limited library of 3D printable materials and the properties of these modeling materials are usually not suitable for microfluidics and bioengineering applications. Therefore, this PhD thesis aims to provide solutions to apply 3D printing in microfluidics and bioengineering. There are four projects in the thesis, which can be classified into two parts.
In the first part, we utilized the 3D printer to accelerate and simplify the fabrication of microfluidic chip. The 3D printed object was served as a master in conventional soft-lithographic fabrication of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip. Through 3D printing, features with different height or even topologically complicated 3D features can be easily incorporated in the master. As a result, PDMS-based 3D microfluidic chip can be fabricated in a single soft-lithographic step. Besides, 3D printer was used to print functional microfluidic chip directly. Because of the difference in material properties between PDMS and 3D printable resin, conventional on-chip component such as peristaltic valve and pump cannot be directly applied on 3D printed chip. Thus, a new class of movable chip components were developed to enrich the functionalities of 3D printed chip. Moreover, with the new components, a point-of-care colorimetric urinary protein analysis was demonstrated.
In the second part, we focused on bioengineering. We developed a replication process to transfer the geometry of 3D printed structures into hydrogels. With this approach, highly complicated microfluidic network can be incorporated in the cell-seeded hydrogel scaffold, which is difficult to achieve by other methods. Furthermore, another molding method tailored for other general curable materials is developed. With this method, the 3D printed structures can be replicated into other biocompatible polymer such as PDMS. More interestingly, the feature size of the 3D replica can be even reduced significantly by a novel electroless plating process over the metallic mold.
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