3D printing cross‐scale mold for manufacturing micromixers

Abstract

AbstractNowadays, the methods of manufacturing microfluidic mixers were not flexible enough to customize and manufacture special sizes. Hence, a novel electrohydrodynamic jet printing method was proposed to fabricate cross‐scale mold for manufacturing micromixers in one step. Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP)/polycaprolactone (PCL) composite ink was prepared, and various printing parameters were investigated for fabricating varieties of 2D structures and 3D regular molds. A cross‐scale spiral mixer was successfully printed, various diameter ratio of 5.6, aspect ratio of 7.2. The PVP/PCL lines were direct printed, size of 66 nm deep and 743 nm wide. The circles were size of 564 nm deep and 7.02 μm wide. The mixing conditions of micromixers with different width ratios were simulated and analyzed; and the better mixing effect of micromixers with width ratio of 2:1 was proved, improved the mixing efficiency by 15.6% compared with micromixer without cross‐scale channels. The cross‐scale micromixers are promising for skin chip sensor and drug metabolite analysis, and the printing method proposed in this paper has great application potential in micro‐electro‐mechanical systems (MEMS).