Cheap, versatile, and turnkey fabrication of microfluidic master molds using consumer-grade LCD stereolithography 3D printing

The recent development of 3D printers allowed a lot of limitations in the field of microfabrication to be circumvented. The ever-growing chase for smaller dimensions has come to an end in domains such as microfluidics, and the focus now shifted to a cost-efficiency challenge. In this paper, the use of a high-resolution stereolithography LCD 3D printer is investigated for fast and cheap production of microfluidic master molds. More precisely, the UV LED array and the LCD matrix of the printer act as an illuminator and a programmable photomask for soft lithography. The achieved resolution of around 100 μm is mainly limited by the pixel geometry of the LCD matrix. A tree-shape gradient mixer was fabricated using the presented method. It shows very good performances despite the presence of sidewall ripples due to the uneven pixel geometry of the LCD matrix. Any design can be brought from concept to realization in under 2 h. Given its sub-€1000 cost, this method is a very good entry point for labs wishing to explore the potential of microfluidic devices in their experiments, as well as a teaching tool for introducing students to microfluidics.

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