This dissertation focuses on developing 3D printing as a fabrication method for microfluidic devices. Specifically, I concentrate on the 3D printing approach known as Digital Light Processing stereolithography (DLP-SLA) in which serially projected images are used to sequentially photopolymerize layers to build a microfluidic device. The motivation for this work is to explore a much faster alternative to cleanroom-based microfabrication that additionally offers the opportunity to densely integrate microfluidic elements in compact 3D layouts for dramatic device volume reduction. In the course of my research, an optical approach was used to guide custom resin formulation to help create the interconnected hollow regions that form a microfluidic device. This was based on a new a mathematical model to calculate the optical dose delivered throughout a 3D printed part, which also explains the effect of voids. The model was verified by a series of 3D printed chips fabricated with a commercial 3D printer and a custom resin. Channels as small as 108 µm x 60 µm were repeatably fabricated. Next, highly compact active fluidic components, including valves, pumps, and multiplexers, were fabricated with the same 3D printer and resin. The valves achieved a 10x size reduction compared with previous results, and were the smallest 3D printed valves at the time. Moreover, by adding thermal initiator to thermally cure devices after 3D printing, the durability of 3D printed valves was improved and up to 1 million actuations were demonstrated.To further decrease the 3D printed feature size, I built a custom 3D printer with a 385 nm LED light source and a 7.56 µm pixel pitch in the plane of the projected image. A custom resin was also developed to take advantage of the new 3D printer's features, which necessitated developing a UV absorber screening process which I applied to 20 candidate absorbers. In addition, a new mathematical model was developed to use only the absorber's molar absorptivity measurement to predict the resin optical penetration depth, which is important for determining the z-resolution that can be achieved with a given resin. The final resin formulation uses 2-nitrophenyl phenyl sulfide (NPS) as the UV absorber. With this resin, along with a new channel narrowing technique, I successfully created flow channel cross sections as small as 18 µm x 20 µm.With the custom 3D printer, smaller valves and pumps become possible, which led to the invention of a new method of creating large numbers of high density chip-to-chip microfluidic interconnects based on either simple integrated microgaskets (SIMs) or controlled-compression integrated microgaskets (CCIMs). Since these structures are directly 3D printed as part of a device, they require no additional materials or fabrication steps. As a demonstration of the efficacy of this approach, 121 chip-to-chip interconnects in an 11 x 11 array for both SIMs and CCIMs with an areal density of 53 interconnects per square mm were demonstrated, and tested up to 50 psi without leaking. Finally, these interconnects were used in the development of 3D printed chips with valves having 30x smaller volume than the valves we previously demonstrated. These valves served as a building block for demonstrating the miniaturization potential of an active fluid mixer using our 3D printing tools, materials, and methods. The mixer provided a set of selectable mixing ratios, and was designed in 2 configurations, a linear dilution mixer-pump (LDMP) and a parallelized dilution mixer-pump (PDMP), which occupy volumes of only 1.5 cubic mm and 2.6 cubic mm, respectively.

No description available.

Thermosets are appropriate materials for various applications due to benefits such as heat resistance and good mechanical properties. The disadvantages of traditional thermosets from a sustainable manufacturing perspective are that they are usually derived from fossil resources, and also have permanent cross-linked networks that are difficult to break, making them non-recyclable. It is therefore of great interest to find bio-based alternatives, especially ones that can be recycled or bio-degraded. In this project four bio-based photocurable resins, meant for 3D printing thermosets, were characterized by their mechanical properties and chemical degradation. They were designed with esters and imine groups in order to use dynamic, reversible bonds to attempt mechanical recycling and chemical degradation. The resins were composed of methacrylated eugenol, methacrylated PHB-diol and Schiff base methacrylated extended vanillin. The latter provided good thermal stability, solvent resistance and mechanical properties to the thermosets. The mechanical recycling was able to produce cohesive thermoset films, successfully reforming broken bonds, but the mechanical properties decreased substantially from the process. Chemical degradation of the thermosets could be performed, but further use of the degraded material was not examined. / Härdplaster är lämpliga material för olika applikationer på grund av sina fördelaktiga egenskaper, som värmebeständighet och goda mekaniska egenskaper. Nackdelarna med traditionella härdplaster ur ett hållbarhetsperspektiv är att de vanligtvis härrör från fossila resurser. De har även permanent tvärbundna nätverk som är svåra att bryta, vilket gör dem icke-återvinningsbara. Det är därför av stort intresse att hitta biobaserade alternativ, särskilt sådana som kan återvinnas eller biologiskt nedbrytas. I detta projekt karaktäriserades fyra biobaserade foto-polymeriserbara hartser, avsedda för 3D-tillverkning av härdplaster, genom sina mekaniska egenskaper och kemiska nedbrytbarhet. De designades med ester- och imingrupper för att kunna använda dynamiska, reversibla bindningar i ett försök att mekaniskt återvinna och kemiskt bryta ned härdplasterna. Hartserna var sammansatta av metakrylerad eugenol, metakrylerad PHB-diol och Schiff-bas metakrylerad förlängd vanillin. Den senare tillförde bra termisk stabilitet, motstånd mot lösningsmedel och mekaniska egenskaper åt härdplasterna. Den mekaniska återvinningen kunde producera sammanhängande plastfilmer genom återskapade bindningar, men de mekaniska egenskaperna försämrades avsevärt från processen. Kemisk nedbrytning av härdplasterna kunde utföras, men ytterligare användning av det nedbrutna materialet undersöktes inte.

<p>The color gamut, i.e. the range of reproducible colors, is in most conventional display systems not sufficient for accurate color reproduction of highly saturated colors. Any conventional three-primary display suffers from a color gamut limited within the triangle spanned by the primary colors. Even by using purer primaries, enlarging the triangle, there will still be a problem to cover all the perceivable colors. By using a system with more than three primary colors, in printing denoted Hi-Fi color, the gamut will be expanded into a polygon, yielding a larger gamut and better color reproduction. </p><p><i>Digital Light Processing (DLP)</i> is a projection technology developed by Texas Instrument. It uses a chip with an array of thousands of individually controllable micromirrors, each representing a single pixel in the projected image. A lamp illuminates the micromirrors, and by controlling the amount of time each mirror reflect the light, using pulse width modulation, the projected image is created. Color reproduction is achieved by letting the light pass through color filters, corresponding to the three primaries, mounted in a filter wheel. </p><p>In this diploma work, the DLP projector InFocus^® LP™350 has been evaluated, using the Photo Research^® PR^®-705 Spectroradiometer. The colorimetric performance of the projector is found to be surprisingly poor, with a color gamut noticeably smaller then that of a CRT monitor using standardized phosphors. This is due to the broad banded filters used, yielding increased brightness at the expense of the pureness of the primaries. </p><p>With the intention of evaluating the potential for the DLP technology in multi- primary systems, color filters are selected for additional primary colors. The filters are selected from a set of commercially available filters, the Kodak Wratten filters for science and technology. Used as performance criteria for filter selection is the volume of the gamut in the CIE 1976 (L*u*v*) uniform color space. </p><p>The selected filters are measured and evaluated in combination with the projector, verifying the theoretical results from the filter selection process. Colorimetric performance of the system is greatly improved, yielding an expansion of the color gamut in CIE 1976 (L*u*v*) color space by 79%, relative the original three-primary system. These results indicate the potential for DLP in multiprimary display systems, with the capacity to greatly expand the color gamut, by using carefully selected filters for additional primary colors.</p>

The color gamut, i.e. the range of reproducible colors, is in most conventional display systems not sufficient for accurate color reproduction of highly saturated colors. Any conventional three-primary display suffers from a color gamut limited within the triangle spanned by the primary colors. Even by using purer primaries, enlarging the triangle, there will still be a problem to cover all the perceivable colors. By using a system with more than three primary colors, in printing denoted Hi-Fi color, the gamut will be expanded into a polygon, yielding a larger gamut and better color reproduction. Digital Light Processing (DLP) is a projection technology developed by Texas Instrument. It uses a chip with an array of thousands of individually controllable micromirrors, each representing a single pixel in the projected image. A lamp illuminates the micromirrors, and by controlling the amount of time each mirror reflect the light, using pulse width modulation, the projected image is created. Color reproduction is achieved by letting the light pass through color filters, corresponding to the three primaries, mounted in a filter wheel. In this diploma work, the DLP projector InFocus® LP™350 has been evaluated, using the Photo Research® PR®-705 Spectroradiometer. The colorimetric performance of the projector is found to be surprisingly poor, with a color gamut noticeably smaller then that of a CRT monitor using standardized phosphors. This is due to the broad banded filters used, yielding increased brightness at the expense of the pureness of the primaries. With the intention of evaluating the potential for the DLP technology in multi- primary systems, color filters are selected for additional primary colors. The filters are selected from a set of commercially available filters, the Kodak Wratten filters for science and technology. Used as performance criteria for filter selection is the volume of the gamut in the CIE 1976 (L*u*v*) uniform color space. The selected filters are measured and evaluated in combination with the projector, verifying the theoretical results from the filter selection process. Colorimetric performance of the system is greatly improved, yielding an expansion of the color gamut in CIE 1976 (L*u*v*) color space by 79%, relative the original three-primary system. These results indicate the potential for DLP in multiprimary display systems, with the capacity to greatly expand the color gamut, by using carefully selected filters for additional primary colors.

Överkonsumtionen av engångsartiklar i fossilbaserad plast är ett av dagens stora miljöproblem. Således finns en efterfrågan på strategier för framställning av biobaserade plaster i allmänhet och härdplaster i synnerhet. Tidigare forskning har visat att vanillin-baserade resin, genom UV-härdning och dynamisk iminkemi, kan användas i framställningen av härdplaster som är termiskt bearbetningsbara, kemiskt återvinningsbara och självläkande. Följaktligen är Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D-utskrivning en möjlig och flexibel friformframställningsmetod med stor noggrannhet för sådana härdplaster.  Mot denna bakgrund framställdes, i detta projekt, tre olika UV-härdbara, biobaserade monomerer, i form av vitrimerresin, genom en tvåstegsreaktion: metakrylering av vanillin följt av iminbildning med tre olika aminer (etylendiamin, EDA; 2,2′-etylendioxi bisetylamin, EDEA och trimetylolpropan trispolypropylenglykol aminterminerad eter, T-403). De tre olika monomererna analyserades för att identifiera den mest lämpade för friformframställning av härdplast med DLP 3D-printning. Monomeren framställd med EDA kunde inte UV-härdas till en härdplast. De två andra monomererna, å andra sidan, härdades framgångsrikt till härdplaster med god termisk stabilitet (upp till ungefär 300 °C) samtidigt som de var termiskt bearbetningsbara. Vidare visade dessa härdplaster lovande resultat vad gäller självläkning och kemisk återvinningsbarhet. Härdningen av monomeren syntetiserad med EDEA krävde minst tidsåtgång. Utöver detta visade denna härdplast god stabilitet i ett flertal vanliga lösningsmedel samtidigt som den, till följd av dess dynamiska iminbindningar, kemiskt kunde återvinnas i hexylamin. Slutligen visades det hur detta resin framgångsrikt kunde användas i DLP 3D-utskrivning av härdplast. / One of the main causes of the petrochemical depletion is the overconsumption of single-use plastic products. New strategies based on the production of plastics (in particular thermosets) starting from bio-based resources are, therefore, demanded. Previous research has shown how vanillin-based vitrimer resins can be photocured into thermally reprocessable, chemically recyclable and self-healable imine thermosets; and the potential of the light-assisted 3D-printing techniques for the photocuring of resins with great accuracy and flexibility.  In this study, three different photocurable biobased vitrimer resins were synthesized through a two-step procedure involving the methacrylation of vanillin and the Schiff-base reaction with two different diamines (ethylenediamine, EDA; 2,2′-(Ethylenedioxy) bis(ethylamine), EDEA) and a triamine (trimethylolpropane tris[poly(propylene glycol), amine terminated] ether, T-403). The resins were analyzed in order to find the most suitable one for DLP 3D-printing. The resin with EDA, as diamine, could not be successfully UV-cured into a thermoset. The other two thermosets showed good thermal stability, up to about 300 °C, while still being thermally reprocessable. In addition, the thermosets were promising in terms of self-healability and chemical recyclability. The thermoset obtained from the Schiff-base resin synthesized with the diamine EDEA provided the shortest curing time. This resin also displayed good solvent resistance against common solvents and potential chemical recyclability in hexylamine through an imine exchange reaction. As a final step, the possibility to obtain tridimensional thermosets by curing this resin with a DLP 3D-printing was successfully demonstrated.