A Non-Sacrificial 3D Printing Process for Fabricating Integrated Micro/Mesoscale Molds

Three-dimensional printing technology has been implemented in microfluidic mold fabrication due to its freedom of design, speed, and low-cost fabrication. To facilitate mold fabrication processes and avoid the complexities of the soft lithography technique, we offer a non-sacrificial approach to fabricate microscale features along with mesoscale features using Stereolithography (SLA) printers to assemble a modular microfluidic mold. This helps with addressing an existing limitation with fabricating complex and time-consuming micro/mesoscale devices. The process flow, optimization of print time and feature resolution, alignments of modular devices, and the advantages and limitations with the offered technique are discussed in this paper.

Automated summary

Three-dimensional printing technology is used in microfluidic mold fabrication for its advantages such as design freedom, speed, and low-cost. In this paper, we propose a non-sacrificial approach using Stereolithography (SLA) printers to assemble modular microfluidic molds, which simplifies the mold fabrication process and addresses the limitations in fabricating complex and time-consuming micro/mesoscale devices. The paper discusses the process flow, optimization of print time and feature resolution, alignments of modular devices, and the advantages and limitations of the proposed technique.