A Novel Solvent Bonding Method for Creating A 3D, Nonplanar, and Hybrid PLA/PMMA Microfluidic Chip

摘要

FDM is one of the 3D printing approaches and widely used as a method to fabricate microfluidic system. But the poor optical transparency of the printed microfluidic devices makes the characterization and quantification of experiment results extremely difficult. In this study, a solvent bonding method between PMMA and PLA thermoplastic materials is developed, which can be used to create a hybrid microfluidic chip. The benefits of creating such hybrid microfluidic chips include: (1) simpler fabrication process for creating complex 3D microfluidic chips; (2) enabling optically characterization and quantification; and (3) the tubing connectors can be printed and embedded with microfluidic chip, making the tubing assembly much easier. Three experiments were conducted, including a S-curved microfluidic chip for fundamental study and other two application-oriented microfluidics including a 3D non-planar micromixer and an emulsion generator. The experiment results clearly showed that this bonding method could rapidly and successfully form a strong bond (over 13 bars) between PLA and PMMA substrates. And the two application examples, a 3D non-planar micromixer and an emulsion generator, clearly demonstrated that complex microfluidic chips could be fabricated by a simpler and faster fabrication process while maintaining their designed functionalities.