UC Irvine

This study aspires to apply elastic material to print LOC (Lab-on-the-chip) immunoassay with manufacturing addictive techniques. The device is designed for the detection of infectious diseases in the field of developing countries. Applying elastic material can shorten the fabrication time of the device.

The first manufacturing technique we choose is Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM). The reason we choose FDM is because of its low cost and popularity. The elastic material TPU has been chosen to print our LOC immunoassay device. In order to accomplish the final design, different states of prototypes were developed to find the proper settings, geometry, functionality, and to solve emerging difficulties resulted from the characteristics of the elastic material. From our tests, we found leakage in our prototypes; we think this problem is resulted from the resolution limit and characteristics of the FDM technique. After we applied the plastic dips method on the prototypes, the leakage problem improved and the LOC immunoassay functioned properly.

We then employed the SLA technique, which can provide higher resolution and density. We used Formlabs SLA printer with their flexible resin to print our prototypes. The problem of leakage did improve, but there are two main issues. First, the elasticity of SLA prototypes is not as good as the FDM prototypes. Second, the clog problem caused by the flexible resin increased the difficulty of miniaturization. A further research on utilizing the SLA printer to print the immunoassay with elastic material is needed.

Lastly, an automated Malaria Ab immunoassay device was developed. The device can automatically perform the standard immunoassay steps specified in the Malaria – Ab ELISA manual from IBL international.