Issue 18, 2015

3D printed microfluidics for biological applications

Abstract

The term “Lab-on-a-Chip,” is synonymous with describing microfluidic devices with biomedical applications. Even though microfluidics have been developing rapidly over the past decade, the uptake rate in biological research has been slow. This could be due to the tedious process of fabricating a chip and the absence of a “killer application” that would outperform existing traditional methods. In recent years, three dimensional (3D) printing has been drawing much interest from the research community. It has the ability to make complex structures with high resolution. Moreover, the fast building time and ease of learning has simplified the fabrication process of microfluidic devices to a single step. This could possibly aid the field of microfluidics in finding its “killer application” that will lead to its acceptance by researchers, especially in the biomedical field. In this paper, a review is carried out of how 3D printing helps to improve the fabrication of microfluidic devices, the 3D printing technologies currently used for fabrication and the future of 3D printing in the field of microfluidics.

Graphical abstract: 3D printed microfluidics for biological applications

Article information

Article type
Critical Review
Submitted
18 Jun 2015
Accepted
22 Jul 2015
First published
22 Jul 2015

Lab Chip, 2015,15, 3627-3637

Author version available

3D printed microfluidics for biological applications

C. M. B. Ho, S. H. Ng, K. H. H. Li and Y. Yoon, Lab Chip, 2015, 15, 3627 DOI: 10.1039/C5LC00685F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements