Portable all-in-one automated microfluidic system (PAMICON) with 3D-printed chip using novel fluid control mechanism

Abstract

Abstract State-of-the-art microfluidic systems rely on relatively expensive and bulky off-chip infrastructures. The core of a system—the microfluidic chip—requires a clean room and dedicated skills to be fabricated. Thus, state-of-the-art microfluidic systems are barely accessible, especially for the do-it-yourself (DIY) community or enthusiasts. Recent emerging technology—3D-printing—has shown promise to fabricate microfluidic chips more simply, but the resulting chip is mainly hardened and single-layered and can hardly replace the state-of-the-art Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chip. There exists no convenient fluidic control mechanism yet suitable for the hardened single-layered chip, and particularly, the hardened single-layered chip cannot replicate the pneumatic valve—an essential actuator for automatically controlled microfluidics. Instead, 3D-printable non-pneumatic or manually actuated valve designs are reported, but their application is limited. Here, we present a low-cost accessible all-in-one portable microfluidic system, which uses an easy-to-print single-layered 3D-printed microfluidic chip along with a novel active control mechanism for fluids to enable more applications. This active control mechanism is based on air or gas interception and can, e.g., block, direct, and transport fluid. As a demonstration, we show the system can automatically control the fluid in microfluidic chips, which we designed and printed with a consumer-grade 3D-printer. The system is comparably compact and can automatically perform user-programmed experiments. All operations can be done directly on the system with no additional host device required. This work could support the spread of low budget accessible microfluidic systems as portable, usable on-the-go devices and increase the application field of 3D-printed microfluidic devices.