Design and fabrication of an affordable polymer micromixer for medical and biomedical applications

Li, Lei; Yang, Can; Shi, Hongliang; Liao, Weizhi; Huang, Hanxiong; Lee, L. James; Castro, José M.; Yi, Allen Y.

doi:10.1002/pen.21648

Cited by 16 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…The device consists of two parts, a static micromixer and a coaxial electrospray system. Microinjection molding was chosen to fabricate this static micromixer. , In order to reduce the cost and achieve mass production, two identical parts were designed for the static micromixer, and therefore, only one mold is needed for the device fabrication. For microinjection molding, all of the features were designed to be perpendicular to the bottom surface for simplicity.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Static Micromixer–Coaxial Electrospray Synthesis of Theranostic Lipoplexes

Mao

et al. 2012

ACS Nano

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Theranostic lipoplexes are an integrated nanotherapeutic system with diagnostic imaging capability and therapeutic functions. They hold great promise to improve current cancer treatments; however, producing uniform theranostic lipoplexes with multiple components in a reproducible manner is a highly challenging task. Conventional methods, such as bulk mixing, are not able to achieve this goal because of their macroscale and random nature. Here we report a novel technique, called the static micromixer-coaxial electrospray (MCE), to synthesize theranostic lipoplexes in a single step with high reproducibility. In this work, quantum dots (QD605) and Cy5-labeled antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (Cy5-G3139) were chosen as the model imaging reagent and therapeutic drug, respectively. Compared with bulk mixing, QD605/Cy5-G3139-loaded lipoplexes produced by MCE were highly uniform with polydispersity of 0.024 ± 0.006 and mean diameter by volume of 194 ± 15 nm. MCE also showed higher encapsulation efficiency of QD605 and Cy5-G3139. QD605 and Cy5 also formed the Förster resonance energy transfer pair, and thus the cellular uptake and intracellular fate of theranostic lipoplexes could be visualized by flow cytometry and confocal microscopy. The lipoplexes were efficiently delivered to A549 cells (non-small cell lung cancer cell line) and down-regulated the Bcl-2 gene expression by 48 ± 6%.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Static Micromixer–Coaxial Electrospray Synthesis of Theranostic Lipoplexes

Mao

et al. 2012

ACS Nano

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“…A higher injection speed can help the PMMA melt flow into the cavity quickly to avoid rapid cooling in the delivery system. Although higher packing pressure and longer packing time lead to more material flowing into the cavity [ 27 ], excessive packing pressure may cause uneven distribution of density, resulting in variations in refraction index. Moreover, if the packing time is too long the gate will be frozen thus preventing material from flowing into the cavity.…”

Section: Microinjection Molding Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Manufacturing of a precision 3D microlens array on a steep curved substrate by injection molding process

Zhang

Scheiding²,

et al. 2013

Advanced Optical Technologies

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In this study, a high volume low cost manufacturing method for microoptical microlens arrays on steep curved substrates using a microinjection molding technique was investigated. The design of the individual lenslets was performed using ZEMAX. This 3D microlens array in this study contains 1219 microlenses that are evenly distributed on its concave surface with a high fill factor. The overall field of view of this microlens array on curved substrates is more than 104°. To complete the manufacturing process, first the mold inserts were machined using a voice coil based fast tool servo technique, then the 3D microlens arrays were injection molded. The injection molding process parameters were evaluated using both experiments and numerical simulation for best molding results. In addition, both geometrical errors and optical performance tests showed that the molded polymer microlens arrays can be used in wide angle imaging applications. This study demonstrated that this combined process is capable of fabricating high precision microlens arrays at steep curved substrates at low cost. The microlens arrays created in this study have broad applications in optical, medical and biomedical domains. The success of this study provided a feasible solution for mass production of 3D microlens arrays on arbitrary substrates

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“…The original design of the micromixer is shown in figure 1 [10]. Unlike some of the previous designs reported by others [6,7], in this design the splitting was realized by dividing the central channel into two subchannels, one leads to upper-right and the other leads to lower-left direction.…”

Section: Analysis and Modification Of The Micromixer Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Besides the mixing performance, the material and manufacturing process for the micromixer also needs to be considered. Recently, a low-cost polymer SAR micromixer and its manufacturing processes have been developed by the authors [10]. The design of the micromixer in this paper was based on the same high precision and low-cost mass production process, which is the combination of ultraprecision micro machining and microinjection molding.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main motivation of the current work is to analyze the previous design in [10], in order to bring improvement to the mixing performance by adjusting the original design. At the same time, the improvement will not in principle change the machining process of the original design and thus will keep the machinability and mass productivity unchanged.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Improving mixing efficiency of a polymer micromixer by use of a plastic shim divider

Li¹,

Lee²,

Castro³

et al. 2010

J. Micromech. Microeng.

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In this paper, a critical modification to a polymer based affordable split-and-recombination static micromixer is described. To evaluate the improvement, both the original and the modified design were carefully investigated using an experimental setup and numerical modeling approach. The structure of the micromixer was designed to take advantage of the process capabilities of both ultraprecision micromachining and microinjection molding process. Specifically, the original and the modified design were numerically simulated using commercial finite element method software ANSYS CFX to assist the re-designing of the micromixers. The simulation results have shown that both designs are capable of performing mixing while the modified design has a much improved performance. Mixing experiments with two different fluids were carried out using the original and the modified mixers again showed a significantly improved mixing uniformity by the latter. The measured mixing coefficient for the original design was 0.11, and for the improved design it was 0.065. The developed manufacturing process based on ultraprecision machining and microinjection molding processes for device fabrication has the advantage of high-dimensional precision, low cost and manufacturing flexibility.

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Design and fabrication of an affordable polymer micromixer for medical and biomedical applications

Cited by 16 publications

References 28 publications

Static Micromixer–Coaxial Electrospray Synthesis of Theranostic Lipoplexes

Static Micromixer–Coaxial Electrospray Synthesis of Theranostic Lipoplexes

Manufacturing of a precision 3D microlens array on a steep curved substrate by injection molding process

Improving mixing efficiency of a polymer micromixer by use of a plastic shim divider

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