TY - JOUR
T1 - VAT photopolymerization 3D printing optimization of high aspect ratio structures for additive manufacturing of chips towards biomedical applications
AU - Bucciarelli, A.
AU - Paolelli, X.
AU - De Vitis, E.
AU - Selicato, N.
AU - Gervaso, F.
AU - Gigli, G.
AU - Moroni, L.
AU - Polini, A.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to the “Tecnopolo per la medicina di precisione” (TecnoMED Puglia) - Regione Puglia: DGR n. 2117 del 21/11/2018, CUP: B84I18000540002 and “Tecnopolo di Nanotecnologia e Fotonica per la medicina di precisione” (TecnoMED) - FISR/MIUR-CNR: delibera CIPE n.3449 del 7-08-2017, CUP: B83B17000010001. AP gratefully acknowledges the support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 953121 (FLAMIN-GO) and the 2018 LUSH Prize (Young Investigator Award).
Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to the "Tecnopolo per la medicina di precisione" (TecnoMED Puglia) - Regione Puglia: DGR n. 2117 del 21/11/2018, CUP: B84I18000540002 and "Tecnopolo di Nanotecnologia e Fotonica per la medicina di precisione" (TecnoMED) - FISR/MIUR-CNR : delibera CIPE n. 3449 del 7-08-2017 , CUP: B83B17000010001 . AP gratefully acknowledges the support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 953121 (FLAMIN-GO) and the 2018 LUSH Prize (Young Investigator Award).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Authors
PY - 2022/12/1
Y1 - 2022/12/1
N2 - Organ-on-chip and Lab-on-chip are microfluidic devices widely applied in the biomedical field. They are traditionally produced by soft lithography: starting from a mold fabricated by optical photolithography, a Pol-ydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) device is obtained by casting and baking. While this technique offers the possibility to produce features with high resolution, it is not flexible enough to respond to the necessity of customization and prototyping. In this study, we propose as alternative the production of devices by digital light processing (DLP), a vat photopolymerization technology, in combination with a commercially available, biocompatible resin. Studying the process factors by a statistical methodology called Design of Experiment (DoE), we were able to achieve small features with high aspect ratio (60). DoE method allowed us to have a deep understanding of the process without the need of any physical inspection of the involved phenomena, and to generate empirical models, correlating the process factors to the dimensions of the final printed object. We proved that this opti-mization was beneficial also in terms of transparency (evaluated by UV-Vis spectrophotometry), and mechanical strength (evaluated by a compression test) of the printed resin. Finally, a proof-of-concept microfluidic device was fabricated, sealed to a PDMS membrane through an oxygen plasma treatment, and tested against leakage on a microfluidic circuit for one week. As result, we proved that DLP printing is not only a suitable method to develop microfluidic devices, but if correctly optimized it can also reproduce small features in the order of tens of micrometers rapidly.
AB - Organ-on-chip and Lab-on-chip are microfluidic devices widely applied in the biomedical field. They are traditionally produced by soft lithography: starting from a mold fabricated by optical photolithography, a Pol-ydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) device is obtained by casting and baking. While this technique offers the possibility to produce features with high resolution, it is not flexible enough to respond to the necessity of customization and prototyping. In this study, we propose as alternative the production of devices by digital light processing (DLP), a vat photopolymerization technology, in combination with a commercially available, biocompatible resin. Studying the process factors by a statistical methodology called Design of Experiment (DoE), we were able to achieve small features with high aspect ratio (60). DoE method allowed us to have a deep understanding of the process without the need of any physical inspection of the involved phenomena, and to generate empirical models, correlating the process factors to the dimensions of the final printed object. We proved that this opti-mization was beneficial also in terms of transparency (evaluated by UV-Vis spectrophotometry), and mechanical strength (evaluated by a compression test) of the printed resin. Finally, a proof-of-concept microfluidic device was fabricated, sealed to a PDMS membrane through an oxygen plasma treatment, and tested against leakage on a microfluidic circuit for one week. As result, we proved that DLP printing is not only a suitable method to develop microfluidic devices, but if correctly optimized it can also reproduce small features in the order of tens of micrometers rapidly.
KW - 3D printing
KW - Digital light processing
KW - Organ on Chips
KW - Lab on Chips
KW - Design of experiment
KW - Response surface method
KW - Statistical optimization
KW - FABRICATION
KW - SYSTEMS
U2 - 10.1016/j.addma.2022.103200
DO - 10.1016/j.addma.2022.103200
M3 - Article
SN - 2214-8604
VL - 60
JO - Additive Manufacturing
JF - Additive Manufacturing
M1 - 103200
ER -