Highly Fluorinated Methacrylates for Optical 3D Printing of Microfluidic Devices

Highly fluorinated perfluoropolyether (PFPE) methacrylates are of great interest for transparent and chemically resistant microfluidic chips. However, so far only a few examples of material formulations for three-dimensional (3D) printing of these polymers have been demonstrated. In this paper we show that microfluidic chips can be printed using these highly fluorinated polymers by 3D stereolithography printing. We developed photocurable resin formulations that can be printed in commercial benchtop stereolithography printers. We demonstrate that the developed formulations can be printed with minimal cross-sectional area of 600 mu m for monolithic embedded microfluidic channels and 200 mu m for open structures. The printed and polymerized PFPE methacrylates show a good transmittance above 70% at wavelengths between 520-900 nm and a high chemical resistance when being exposed to organic solvents. Microfluidic mixers were printed to demonstrate the great variability of different designs that can be printed using stereolithography.