Direct printing and integration of micro-fluidic chip and micro-optics

Inkjet printing and additive manufacturing are becoming the most prominent techniques for the fabrication of personalized devices. For microfluidic application the use of ink jet printing could lead to reduce the dimension of the microchannels to hundreds of nanometers while, the combination with 3D printing could allow to personalize the micro-fluidic chip in terms of design, dimension and working properties. In this article we propose an alternative approach to conventional inkjet printing, based on the pyroelectric effect. High viscous polymer solutions are manipulated and used as a mould for the fabrication of polymer chip. Moreover, the same method could be employed for optical functionalizing of lab-on-a-chip devices through demonstration of direct printing of polymer microlenses onto microfluidic chips.