Handheld and ? Turnkey? 3D printed paper-micro fl uidic viscometer with on -board microcontroller for smartphone based biosensing applications

摘要

Herein, Microfluidic Paper-based Analytical Devices (mPAD) strips, also called microstrips, have been fabricated using a fused-deposition modeling (FDM) based 3D printer. A polycaprolactone (PCL) filament on a chromatography paper was harnessed to create hydrophobic boundaries of a microchannel. A pair of screen-printed electrodes, with known separation, were integrated on the microchannel to measure the time taken for fluid automatically. A mini electronic sub-system, amenable to connect with an android smartphone, consists of an easily programmable microcontroller, Bluetooth module and voltage booster circuit. The pluggable-and-playable disposable microstrip was utilized to measure the viscosity of various biological samples with an accuracy of 92% with respect to a benchtop viscometer. In particular, the protein denaturation of Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) and Lysozyme, and viscosity variation of hu-man saliva have been observed. With a competency to measure the viscosity between 0.5 cP to 10 cP, platform cost of