Realization of Microfluidic Paper-Based Analytical Devices Using a 3-D Printer: Characterization and Optimization

Microfluidic paper-based analytical devices (μPADs) are a clean-room free, cost-effective, and self-pumping flow-based rapid prototyping technique, which is compatible with a varying range of fluids. Until now, μPADs have been primarily fabricated using crayons, and plotting-machine and solid-ink printers. These devices can be easily employed for various detection schemes, such as electrical, electrochemical, and optical. The presence of a capillary effect in the chromatograph paper has made μPADs independent of a passive device, such as pumps and valves. In this paper, an alternative and a novel method is proposed to achieve the μPADs effortlessly using a 3-D printer (3DP), which has many advantages over the existing methods. For creating hydrophobic barriers for microchannel walls, polycaprolactone (PCL) filament was used with fused-deposition modeling (FDM) 3DP. PCL filaments were deposited on the chromatography paper followed by heating for determining the overall dimension and depth of the microchannel at which PCL melts and penetrates into this paper. The μPADs are characterized and optimized for two parameters. First, fabrication parameters, such as heating temperature and time duration, were used for the creation of the hydrophobic barrier using a hot air oven. Second, the microchannel parameters, such as microchannel width, boundary thickness, chromatography paper grade, and microchannel source shape (rectangular, triangular, and circular) were used for the fluid-flow by measuring the time taken by fluid to travel a fixed length of the microchannel. After rigorous analysis, it was found that for the creation of the hydrophobic barrier, μPADs heated between temperature 120°C to 150°C require 30 min. Under optimized conditions for the fluid flow, the chromatography paper grade 1441 with a triangular source microchannel was found to be best. This paper provides an alternate, simple, and optimized method toward the development of the application-specific μPADs, such as the micro-viscometer, which, in turn, can be widely used to monitor various types of fluids including human bodily fluids.