Microfabrication
When people think about microfluidics, what comes to mind is usually the microfluidic chip. It makes sense because the magic happens inside the chip.
At the MIC, our main focus is on the instruments that go around the chip, i.e., the pumps, valves, sensors, etc. But none of this would make sense without the microfluidic chip. Thus, we cannot overlook the challenges researchers face when microfabricating their microfluidic devices.
PDMS microfabrication has democratised the access to microfluidics in many labs around the world, but, as the field advances, its limitations become more apparent. Thermoplastics came forth as a valuable substitute but their microfabrication is either too expensive or too difficult.
BioProS, easy chip prototyping with thermoplastics
As part of the project BioProS, the MIC aims to address precisely these limitations by creating a process of thermoplastic chip microfabrication analogous to the one in PDMS (GA no. 101070120).
We used our expertise in fabricating PDMS chips without the need for a cleanroom and translated it to PMMA. The result is an effective protocol for fast and easy thermoplastic chip prototyping.
If you want to know more about the project or about the protocol, just follow the links!
3D printing of customized flow cells
Different applications have different needs and, in some special cases, we 3D print custom-made flow cells to fulfill the needs of our projects. We have several printing methods in-house, including a biocompatible printer and resin.
For example, for the project Panbiora, we designed and 3D-printed a microfluidics chip to adapt AMES tests, widely used genotoxicity tests, to microfluidics (GA no. 760921).
The test performed on our designed chip achieved a decrease by half of the testing time and required significantly less material and space.
If you want more info, the results are published here:
Varvara Gribova, Jesus Manuel Antunez Dominguez, Alan Morin, Julia Sepulveda Diaz, Philippe Lavalle, et al.. A miniaturized genotoxicity evaluation system for fast biomaterial-related risk assessment. Analytical Methods, 2023, 15 (12), pp.1584-1593.
https://hal.science/hal-04054693v1/file/islandora_161296.pdf