Fabrication of Microfluidic Chips Based on an EHD-Assisted Direct Printing Method

Microfluidic chips have been widely used in many areas such as biology, environmental monitoring, and micromixing. With the increasing popularity and complexity of microfluidic systems, rapid and convenient approaches for fabricating microfluidic chips are necessary. In this study, a method based on EHD (electrohydrodynamic)-assisted direct printing is proposed. Firstly, the principle of EHD-assisted direct printing was analyzed. The influence of the operating voltage and moving speed of the work table on the width of a paraffin wax model was studied. Then, two kinds of paraffin wax molds for micromixing with channel widths of 120 μm were prepared. A polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) micromixer was fabricated by replicating the paraffin wax mold, and the micromixing of blue and yellow dye was realized. The results show that EHD-assisted direct printing can be used to make complex microscale structures, which has the potential to greatly simplify the manufacturing process.