In this paper, we characterized an assortment of photopolymers and stereolithography processes to produce 3D-printed molds and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) castings of micromixing devices. Once materials and processes were screened, the validation of the soft tooling approach in microfluidic devices was carried out through a case study. An asymmetric split-and-recombine device with different cross-sections was manufactured and tested under different regime conditions (10 < Re < 70). Mixing performances between 3% and 96% were obtained depending on the flow regime and the pitch-to-depth ratio. The study shows that 3D-printed soft tooling can provide other benefits such as multiple cross-sections and other potential layouts on a single mold.

There is a large amount of Information Technology and Communication (ITC) tools that surround scholar activity. The prominent place of the peer-review process upon publication has promoted a crowded market of technological tools in several formats. Despite this abundance, many tools are unexploited or underused because they are not known by the academic community. In this study, we explored the availability and characteristics of the assisting tools for the peer-reviewing process. The aim was to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the tools available at this time, and to hint at new trends for further developments. The result of an examination of literature assisted the creation of a novel taxonomy of types of software available in the market. This new classification is divided into nine categories as follows: (I) Identification and social media, (II) Academic search engines, (III) Journal-abstract matchmakers, (IV) Collaborative text editors, (V) Data visualization and analysis tools, (VI) Reference management, (VII) Proofreading and plagiarism detection, (VIII) Data archiving, and (IX) Scientometrics and Altmetrics. Considering these categories and their defining traits, a curated list of 220 software tools was completed using a crowdfunded database (AlternativeTo) to identify relevant programs and ongoing trends and perspectives of tools developed and used by scholars.