A study on the limits and advantages of using a desktop cutter plotter to fabricate microfluidic networks

Abstract

a low cost, flexible and quick process to fabricate microchannels keeps increasing.Historically, the majority of the initial microfluidics work was done using glass-or silicon-made microfluidic devices (Harrison et al. 1992;Wilding et al. 1994;Woolley and Mathies 1994;Jiang et al. 1995) using techniques like wet and dry etching. In the mid-1990s, a revolution in the fabrication of microfluidics took place with the advent of soft lithography, where a master mold is used to make poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) replicas by casting (Dong et al. 1996;Xia and Whitesides 1998;Duffy et al. 1998). Soft lithography is now a standard for microfluidic prototyping, in part because it enables a relatively inexpensive and rapid fabrication. As long as a master mold is available, experimental microfluidics devices can be made in few hours without the need for a cleanroom. However, the master molds are still mostly fabricated in a cleanroom following a number of processes including dry etching of silicon, and especially SU-8 photolithography (Martinez-Duarte and Madou 2011). As expected, the resolution and achievable complexity of the master mold depend highly on the choice of fabrication technique. For example, microchannels with features of even 100 nm are possible to fabricate using electron beam lithography (Rogers and Nuzzo 2005; Alom Ruiz and Chen 2007). However, most microfluidic devices would feature dimensions from the tens of micrometers to several hundreds, achievable with conventional SU-8 photolithography.Other relatively inexpensive fabrication techniques are printer based, such as that presented by Carrilho et al. (2009) who selectively deposited hydrophobic wax on regular paper to create channel walls. In this particular case, the cross section of the channel is not empty, but contains fibers that facilitate the wicking of the sample throughout the fluidic network. Bruzewicz et al. (2008) also demonstrated a Abstract In this paper, we focus on characterizing the limits of xurography, or patterning with a razor blade, of a pressure-sensitive double-sided adhesive. This is a rapid, inexpensive technique to fabricate robust microfluidics devices. Straight, curved and square serpentine as well as zigzag channels of different dimensions are studied. General guidelines are provided to assess feasibility of a particular geometry a priori. The mechanics of the cut are explored with the aim at identifying the bottlenecks that limit the maximum resolution achieved in xurography of adhesive films. A number of advantages and disadvantages of this technique compared to other common fabrication techniques are also provided.

Low-Cost Microfabrication Tool Box

“…Desktop cutters, such as the Silhouette Curio™ (Figure 5a) that costs ~£200 and is easy to setup up and run, appears as an interesting low-cost alternative. Open structures such as channels, can be easily designed on the free software Silhouette Studio ® , which allows for design features down to 100 μm in thin films [24]. The incisions are made with a sintered tungsten alloy blade (Figure 5b,c) into the desired material.…”

“…Xurography has been used to cut cyclo-olefin-based flow chambers to study microtubules dynamics under mechanical stress [25], cut omniphobic fluoroalkylated paper (R F paper) in the production of microfluidic paper-based analytical devices [26] and create moulds for soft-lithography [27]. Even though xurography can achieve good fidelity and reproducibility when cutting relatively thin (<200 µm) and rigid sheets of materials, the use of thick and soft materials (such as PDMS) is more challenging as the sheets deform during the cut process [24].…”

Polymer Microfluidics: Simple, Low-Cost Fabrication Process Bridging Academic Lab Research to Commercialized Production

“…Rapid prototyping methods, such as computer numerical controlled (CNC) milling [ 25 , 26 , 27 ], and laser ablation [ 28 , 29 ] are available for generating microchannels on the thermoplastic substrate. Recently, a low-cost rapid prototyping method by a digital craft cutter was proposed to create microchannels on a thin transparent thermoplastic film [ 30 , 31 , 32 ]. Although CNC, laser ablation, or digital craft cutter methods have limits with respect to microchannel resolution and surface roughness, they are important procedures in thermoplastic microfluidics fabrication because rapid prototyping is a simple process for researchers to establish proof-of-concept without the need for micromold fabrication.…”

Enrichment of diluted cell populations from large sample volumes using 3D carbon-electrode dielectrophoresis

“…A 1.8 mm-wide, 3.2 cm-long channel was cut from a 127 lm-thick double sided pressure sensitive adhesive, or PSA (Switchmark 212R, Flexcon, USA) and adhered to a previously drilled polycarbonate piece, in a process recently detailed by the authors. 50 This arrangement was then manually positioned around the carbon electrode array and sealed using a rolling press. The complete process is shown in Fig.…”