Rapid Manufacturing Of Microreactor For Chemical Synthesis Based On 3D Printing

Due to its distinguished mass and heat transfer performance, microreactor has great advantages in chemical synthesis. Conventional replication techniques of microreactors such as injection molding require the creation of a replication master, creating microreactors only in the second process step—they can be therefore termed as two-(or multi-)step manufacturing techniques. However,3D Printing allows the direct creation of microreactors from digital three-dimensional models, shortening concept-to-chip times, and quick adaption is possible by simply changing digital data.In this paper, the fabrication of PDMS (Polydimethylsiloxane) microfluidic devices based on 3D printed sacrificial PVA kernel was demonstrated. Based on this new method, different kinds of micromixers and microreactor for chemical synthesis were fabricated. The main conclusion of this article includes:(1) A new manufacturing method based on 3D printed sacrificial PVA kernel was developed. As-fabricated microfluidic device has a channel size of 500×800μm in height and width. The roughness of the surface inside the microchannel was 5 μm.(2) PDMS active micro mixer was fabricated based on 3D-printed sacrificial kernels with integrated magnetic stirring bar as active mixing. As-fabricated active micro mixer was able to reach uniform mixing immediately at a range of Reynolds number from 0.95 to 66.8, overcoming the mixing challenge at the micro scale and showing great potential in chemical synthesis.(3) Microreaction system for nanoparticle synthesis was designed based on the new manufacturing method and electric heating module. Gold nanoparticles were synthesized in oleylamine/octadecene system at different temperature, residence time and mixing regime of precursors respectively. The integration of active micro mixer gave rise to higher purity of gold nanparticles.