Biomimetic on-chip filtration enabled by direct micro-3D printing on membrane

Abstract

Membrane-on-chip is of growing interest in a wide variety of high-throughput environmental and water research. Advances in membrane technology continuously provide novel materials and multi-functional structures. Yet, the incorporation of membrane into microfluidic devices remains challenging, thus limiting its versatile utilization. Herein, via micro-stereolithography 3D printing, we propose and fabricate a “fish gill” structure-integrated on-chip membrane device, which has the self-sealing attribute at structure-membrane interface without extra assembling. As a demonstration, metallic micromesh and polymeric membrane can also be easily embedded in 3D printed on-chip device to achieve anti-fouling and anti-clogging functionality for wastewater filtration. As evidenced from in-situ visualization of structure-fluid-foulant interactions during filtration process, the proposed approach successfully adopts the fish feeding mechanism, being able to “ricochet” foulant particles or droplets through hydrodynamic manipulation. When benchmarked with two common wastewater treatment scenarios, such as plastic micro-particles and emulsified oil droplets, our biomimetic filtration devices exhibit 2 ~ 3 times longer durability for high-flux filtration than devices with commercial membrane. This proposed 3D printing-on-membrane approach, elegantly bridging the fields of microfluidics and membrane science, is instrumental to many other applications in energy, sensing, analytical chemistry and biomedical engineering.

Sustainable biomimetic solar distillation with edge crystallization for passive salt collection and zero brine discharge

“…4 ). By using infrared imaging 35 , 36 , we investigated the imbibition of saline water (24 wt.% NaCl) along the nanostructured TiO 2 /Ti mesh (artificial stem) in the biomimetic device by tracking the liquid front. The transient evolution of the waterfront along the mesh wires is shown in Fig.…”

Additive Manufacturing in Underwater Applications

“…This group has not been yet tested for the technology of printing in situ in the underwater environment. Nevertheless, it has been used for the manufacturing of some elements for underwater applications, such as housing for monitoring elements that work underwater [45,63], membranes for water treatment systems [64], or other advanced solutions such as an underwater magnetic nanofluid droplet-based generator (designed to convert the mechanical energy of sliding droplets in to electricity), which was inspired by shark skin [65].…”

Integrated membranes within centrifugal microfluidic devices: a review

“…Innovative microstructural alternatives have been proposed which achieve anti-fouling and anti-clogging functionality, in addition to higher durability, through biomimicry. 14 Despite these various challenges, filtration may be a necessary sample processing step in many fields, most particularly biomedical and environmental, where complex mixtures are commonplace. Examples of this include the filtration of soil slurries on a centrifugal microdevice using embedded commercial filters, which outperformed sedimentation for particulate removal.…”

“…[7][8][9] Microfluidic devices have also achieved novel functionalities that are unattainable at the macroscale, moving beyond straightforward performance enhancements. [10][11][12][13][14] Microscale fluid dynamics underlie the reasons behind these various advancements, as forces not normally relevant (e.g., interfacial surface tension or van der Waals forces) begin to dominate 15 while heat and mass transfer are also more efficient. 16 Pre-dating the rapid advancements in microscale engineering was the fascinating evolution of membrane technology (Fig.…”