Fused-filament fabrication of fluorinated microfluidic chips for high-performance applications

Microfluidics have increased in popularity during the last decades due to various advantages of miniaturization for applications in biochemistry, biomedicine, analytical chemistry or chemical synthesis. Still, microstructuring of microfluidic chips is mostly done with soft lithography in PDMS. 3D printing was said to revolutionize the prototypipng of microfluidics, but to date there is not a vide variety of materials, that can be processed by 3D printing. This work aims at establishing a protocol in order to fabricate structures from highly fluorinated thermoplasts, that can wishstand high temperatures and are chemically more resistant than other thermoplasts which are currently processed by fused-filament fabrication. Furthermore, the aim of the study is to optimize a protocol in ordert o write embedded channels and access the minimum possible channel diameter. As a showcase of functional microfluidic chips the structures printed will be utilized for chemical reactions that would not be possible with conventional 3D printing materials, underlining the versatility of the established printing protocols.