doi: 10.3850/978-981-11-0749-8_722
Xurography and Lamination for Manufacturing Point-of-Care (POC) Micromixers
J.Israel Martínez-López, Mauricio Mojica, H.A. Betancourt, Ciro A. Rodríguez and Héctor R. Siller
Tecnológico de Monterrey, Eugenio Garza Sada 2501 Sur, 64849 Monterrey, N.L., México
Abstract
This work evaluates the viability of xurography as a rapid fabrication tool for the development of ultra-low cost microfluidic technology for extreme Point-of-Care (POC) micromixing devices. By eschewing photolithographic processes and the bulkiness of pumping and enclosure system for rapid fabrication and passively driven operation, xurography is introduced as manufacture alternative for asymmetric split and recombine (ASAR) micromixers. A T-micromixer design was used as a reference to assess different cutting conditions and materials on the geometric features of microdevices. Inspection with stereographic and confocal microscopy showed that it is possible to manufacture devices below 8 % of absolute dimensional error. Implementation of the manufacture methodology in a modified circular shaped based ASAR microdevices (balanced and unbalanced configurations) showed that, despite precision limitations of the xurographic process, it is possible to implement this methodology to produce functional micromixing devices. Mixing efficiency was evaluated numerically and experimentally at the outlet of the microdevices with performance up to 40 %. Overall, the assessment encourages further research with xurography for micromixers for POC devices.
Keywords: Rapid fabrication, Microfluidics, Split and recombination, Low-cost, Xurography, SAR, ASAR.
