Making lab equipment more accessible via 3-D printing
Making lab equipment more accessible via 3-D printing
Microfluidic devices are an integral part of many science labs. What if we made them more accessible using 3-D printing?Image by A1 B2 from Pixabay.Microfluidic devices are an integral part of many science labs. Think mixers, cell culture chambers, droplet generators, multi-layer gradient generators, flow resistors, integrated electrodes and integrated porous membranes to name a few.Researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) are working on a 3-D printing framework to make such devices more accessible.Current fabrication method is slow and expensiveCurrently, the most common fabrication method for microfluidic devices is soft lithography: elastomeric materials are casted on a mold fabricated in a cleanroom. Despite multiple desirable characteristics to fabricate microfluidic channels, however, soft lithography is a manual process that is difficult to automate. Typically, soft lithography has a design-to-prototype cycle of a few days.