Benchtop fabrication of three-dimensional reconfigurable microfluidic devices from paper–polymer composite

Abstract

We presented a benchtop technique that can fabricate reconfigurable, three-dimensional (3D) microfluidic devices made from a soft paper–polymer composite. This fabrication approach can produce microchannels at a minimal width of 100 μm and can be used to prototype 3D microfluidic devices by simple bending and stretching. The entire fabrication process can be finished in 2 hours on a laboratory bench without the need for special equipment involved in lithography. Various functional microfluidic devices (e.g., droplet generator and reconfigurable electronic circuit) were prepared using this paper–polymer hybrid microfluidic system. The developed method can be applied in a wide range of standard applications and emerging technologies such as liquid-phase electronics.