Robust Production of Well‐Controlled Microdroplets in a 3D‐Printed Chimney‐Shaped Milli‐Fluidic Device

Abstract

Abstract3D‐printing technology has recently been exploited in droplet microfluidics due to its simplicity and low cost. Unresolved, however, is the design and fabrication of 3D‐printed droplet generators that allow high throughput production of monodisperse droplets with sizes ranging from tens to hundreds of microns in a robust manner. Herein, a newly designed 3D‐printed milli‐fluidic device with a chimney‐shaped void geometry that produces monodisperse droplets controllably with the size covering a broad range is reported. The droplet generator with four parallelized chimneys is devised to simultaneously generate droplets of various size as well as spherical glycine crystals of various size in a single system, demonstrating its potential as a point‐of‐care medicine manufacturing platform.

Hydrophilic modification of SLA 3D printed droplet generators by photochemical grafting

“…[3][4][5] 3D printing is fast, simple, low cost, and can produce 3D structured polymer microchips that are resistant to swelling in solvents. [6][7][8] PDMS is known to swell in many organic solvents, which limits its application in micro-uidics. Swelling is of utmost concern in droplet generators because of the strong dependence of droplet formation on channel dimensions.…”

“…Fused deposition modelling (FDM) is also used, but printable feature size is poor compared to SLA. 1,12 The reported droplet generator designs encompass 3D structures, 7,8,[13][14][15][16][17] planar structures, and modular designs. 13,16 Other droplet generators utilize 3D printing for either device mould making, 18,19 or parts to make hybrid devices.…”

Fabrication of Microfluidic Devices for Emulsion Formation by Microstereolithography

“…Hwang et al PµSL-printed a millifluidic device with a chimney-shaped geometry consisting of a cubic bottom part and a pyramidal upper part ( Figure 4 B) [ 177 ]. The fluids were introduced from opposite directions for parallelization of droplet formation.…”

“…When rotated, the screw moved upward or downward, adjusting a gap at the T-junction, which enabled the droplet size to be varied from 39 µm to over 1000 µm within the same flow cell. Similar to the device proposed by Hwang et al [ 177 ], that of Seo et al [ 180 ] enabled the size of the droplets to be adjusted by more than two orders of magnitude without changing the CAD of the device.…”

“…Adapted with permission from Thiele et al [ 20 ] ( B ) 3D-printed chimney-shaped millifluidic device for producing emulsions with diameters as small as 60 µm. Adapted with permission from Kim et al [ 177 ] ( C ) Interconnected discrete 3D-printed moduli, resulting in a flow-focusing device for microdroplet formation. Adapted with permission from Malmstadt et al [ 81 ].…”