Fused filament fabrication 3D printed polylactic acid electroosmotic pumps
Publication Name
Lab on a Chip
Abstract
Additive manufacturing (3D printing) offers a flexible approach for the production of bespoke microfluidic structures such as the electroosmotic pump. Here a readily accessible fused filament fabrication (FFF) 3D printing technique has been employed for the first time to produce microcapillary structures using low cost thermoplastics in a scalable electroosmotic pump application. Capillary structures were formed using a negative space 3D printing approach to deposit longitudinal filament arrangements with polylactic acid (PLA) in either "face-centre cubic"or "body-centre cubic"arrangements, where the voids deliberately formed within the deposited structure act as functional micro-capillaries. These 3D printed capillary structures were shown to be capable of functioning as a simple electroosmotic pump (EOP), where the maximum flow rate of a single capillary EOP was up to 1.0 μl min-1 at electric fields of up to 750 V cm-1. Importantly, higher flow rates were readily achieved by printing parallel multiplexed capillary arrays.
Open Access Status
This publication is not available as open access
Volume
21
Issue
17
First Page
3338
Last Page
3351