Agile manufacturing of PDMS microfluidic devices for cell culture without a clean room

A laser-cut PDMS microfluidic workflow enables clean-room-free fabrication, bonding without plasma cleaner, and perfusion-capable pressure up to about 900 mbar after corona activation.

• Why it matters: Clean-room photolithography is slow and costly for prototyping millimeter-scale microfluidic devices, limiting rapid design iteration in biology labs.
• What they did: They laser-cut PMMA, polystyrene, and PVC tape masters across laser power/speed grids, used SEM to derive linear cut-depth/width rules, then bonded PDMS to glass by early curing and contact completion, with optional handheld corona activation.
• The result: Devices without surface treatment withstood about 400 mbar, while corona-activated glass reached about 900 mbar, supporting perfusion and a three-channel PMMA-molded co-culture of cancer cells and fibroblasts.

AI summary of the abstract · may contain errors · not medical advice · read the paper.