Affordable portable manufacturing of microfluidic mixers and separators through tunable sacrificial layer morphologies

Microfluidic devices have the ability to let humans see and test a variety of chemicals and cells to mix and separate for medical and biological applications. These applications include drug administration, cell analysis on a micro scale, and can help diagnose or detect diseases. However, due to the massive costs and inefficiencies of such devices, microfluidic devices can be hard and costly to manufacture. This project aims to provide an alternative to manufacturing effective, efficient, and repeatable devices at a low expenditure. We use a sacrificial layer of gelatin dispensed from a custom made inkjet printer on a heated substrate. This process is designed to create reusable mixers and separators for these previously mentioned applications at an affordable price. By creating an affordable way to produce separators and mixers, we hope to provide the scientific community the means to expand their applicative research with the use of this process to create cheap and effective microfluidic devices.