title: Confined Gelatin Dehydration as a Viable Route To Go Beyond Micromilling Resolution and Miniaturize Biological Assays.
abstract: Nowadays, microfluidic channels of a few tens of micrometers are required and widely used in many fields, especially for surface-processing applications and miniaturization of biological assays. Herein, we selected micromilling as a low-cost technology and proposed an approach capable of overcoming its limitations; in fact, microstructures below 20-30 μm in depth are difficult to obtain, and the manufacturing error is rather high, as it is inversely proportional to the depth. Indeed, the proposed method uses a confined dehydration process of a patterned gelatin substrate fabricated via replica molding onto a micromilled poly(methyl methacrylate) substrate to produce a gelatin master with demonstrated final micrometric features down to 3 μm for the channel depth and, in specific configurations, down to 5 μm for the channel width. Finally, we demonstrated the ability to flux liquids in miniaturized microfluidic devices and fabricated and tested-as an example-micrometric microstructures arrays connected via microchannels for biological assays.
authors.affiliation: Center for Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT@CRIB) , Largo Barsanti e Matteucci, 53, Naples 80125, Italy.|Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials (CRIB), University of Naples Federico II , Naples 80125, Italy.
authors.forename: Raffaele
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vecchione
authors.affiliation: Center for Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT@CRIB) , Largo Barsanti e Matteucci, 53, Naples 80125, Italy.|Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials (CRIB), University of Naples Federico II , Naples 80125, Italy.
authors.forename: Gabriele
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pitingolo
authors.affiliation: Center for Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT@CRIB) , Largo Barsanti e Matteucci, 53, Naples 80125, Italy.|Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials (CRIB), University of Naples Federico II , Naples 80125, Italy.
authors.forename: Andrea P
authors.initials: AP
authors.lastname: Falanga
authors.affiliation: Center for Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT@CRIB) , Largo Barsanti e Matteucci, 53, Naples 80125, Italy.|Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials (CRIB), University of Naples Federico II , Naples 80125, Italy.
authors.forename: Daniela
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Guarnieri
authors.affiliation: Center for Advanced Biomaterials for Healthcare, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT@CRIB) , Largo Barsanti e Matteucci, 53, Naples 80125, Italy.|Department of Chemical, Materials and Industrial Production Engineering, University of Naples Federico II , Naples 80125, Italy.|Interdisciplinary Research Center on Biomaterials (CRIB), University of Naples Federico II , Naples 80125, Italy.
authors.forename: Paolo A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Netti
mesh_terms: D001681:Biological Assay / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D003890:Desiccation; D005780:Gelatin / Q000737:chemistry*; D056656:Lab-On-A-Chip Devices
chemical_list: D005780:Gelatin
keywords: brain endothelial cells; gelatin dehydration; microfluidics; micromilling; miniaturization