Yes / High-throughput manufacturing of transdermal microneedle arrays poses a significant challenge due to the high precision and number of features that need to be produced and the requirement of multi-step processing methods for achieving challenging micro-features. To address this challenge, we report a flexible and cost-effective process chain for transdermal microneedle array manufacture that includes mould production using laser machining and replication of thermoplastic microneedles via micro-injection moulding (micromoulding). The process chain also incorporates an in-line manufacturing data monitoring capability where the variability in the quality of microneedle arrays can be determined in a production run using captured data. Optical imaging and machine vision technologies are also implemented to create a quality inspection system that allows rapid evaluation of key quality indicators. The work presents the capability of laser machining as a cost-effective method for making microneedle moulds and micro-injection moulding of thermoplastic microneedle arrays as a highly-suitable manufacturing technique for large-scale production with low marginal cost. / This research work was undertaken in the context of MICRO-MAN project (“Process Fingerprint for Zero-defect Net-shapeMICROMANufacturing”, http://www.microman.mek.dtu.dk/).MICROMAN is a European Training Network supported byHorizon 2020, the EU Framework Programme for Research andInnovation (Project ID: 674801). This research has also receivedfunding and support from two other Horizon 2020 projects:HIMALAIA (Grant agreement No. 766871) and Laser4Fun (GA no.675063).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BRADFORD/oai:bradscholars.brad.ac.uk:10454/18446 |
| Date | 08 April 2021 |
| Creators | Gülçür, Mert,, Romano, J-M., Penchev, P., Gough, Timothy D., Brown, Elaine C., Dimov, S., Whiteside, Benjamin R. |
| Publisher | Elsevier |
| Source Sets | Bradford Scholars |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Article, Accepted manuscript |
| Rights | © 2021 CIRP. Reproduced in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. |
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