LTCC-3D Coaxial Flow Focusing Microfluidic Reactor for Micro and Nanoparticle Fabrication and Production Scale-Out (original) (raw)

LTCC-3D Flow Focusing Fluidic Microreactor for Nanoparticle Fabrication and Production Scale-Out

Additional Conferences (Device Packaging, HiTEC, HiTEN, and CICMT), 2013

Miniaturization of chemical processes is becoming a must for green chemistry and sustainable industry processes, so technological research in this direction is well received. Continuous microreactor systems hold many potential benefits over batch reactors allowing: high surface-to-volume ratio, fine adjustment of chemical reaction residence times, small thermal inertia and fast changes in temperature. Advantages of multilayer green ceramics for microprocess applications include: LTCC substrate is chemically inert to most solvents, it has a high contact angle, presents low thermal coefficient of expansion, can withstand high operational temperatures and high internal pressures. For these reasons, LTCC-based microsystem technologies allow the implementation of different unitary operations for chemical process, making it an enabling technology for the miniaturization of chemical processes. In fact, recently LTCC microfluidic reactors have been used to produce micro and nanoparticles wi...

Fab on a Package: LTCC Microfluidic Devices Applied to Chemical Process Miniaturization

Micromachines, 2018

Microfluidics has brought diverse advantages to chemical processes, allowing higher control of reactions and economy of reagents and energy. Low temperature co-fired ceramics (LTCC) have additional advantages as material for fabrication of microfluidic devices, such as high compatibility with chemical reagents with typical average surface roughness of 0.3154 µm, easy scaling, and microfabrication. The conjugation of LTCC technology with microfluidics allows the development of micrometric-sized channels and reactors exploiting the advantages of fast and controlled mixing and heat transfer processes, essential for the synthesis and surface functionalization of nanoparticles. Since the chemical process area is evolving toward miniaturization and continuous flow processing, we verify that microfluidic devices based on LTCC technology have a relevant role in implementing several chemical processes. The present work reviews various LTCC microfluidic devices, developed in our laboratory, applied to chemical process miniaturization, with different geometries to implement processes such as ionic gelation, emulsification, nanoprecipitation, solvent extraction, nanoparticle synthesis and functionalization, and emulsion-diffusion/solvent extraction process. All fabricated microfluidics structures can operate in a flow range of mL/min, indicating that LTCC technology provides a means to enhance micro-and nanoparticle production yield.

Numerical and Experimental Analysis of Microfluidic Devices Manufactured in LTCC

2005

The mixture of fluids and reagents constitutes basic stage in many processes in industry and applied science, with applications in Medicine, Pharmacy and Analytical Chemistry. Microfluidic systems and devices display advantages as portability, small volumes of samples and continuous production. Microfluidic mixers with channel size from 1 mm to 1 μm, and flow speed typically of 1 m/s are being used for several applications. Reynolds number is smaller than 1000, characterizing laminar flow regime. Thus, in micro scale the mixture of fluids is dominated by diffusion mechanism, which is a slow and inefficient process. It is possible to speed up this process, by means of active and passive microfluidic devices. In this work an active and passive microfluidic mixers are considered. Devices are implemented in LTCC (Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics) technology, driven by ultrasound where the mixing is done by mass transport. Passive devices are implemented using micro-channels with sharp ...

Microchannel reactors: applications and use in process development

International Journal of …, 2005

Recent research results on microchannel reactors are reviewed with particular reference to their applications and use as a cost effective tool during process development tasks. The high surface to volume ratio, efficient heat and mass transfer characteristics, ...

Continuous flow multi-stage microfluidic reactors via hydrodynamic microparticle railing

Lab on a Chip, 2012

Multi-stage'' fluidic reactions are integral to diverse biochemical assays; however, such processes typically require laborious and time-intensive fluidic mixing procedures in which distinct reagents and/or washes must be loaded sequentially and separately (i.e., one-at-a-time). Microfluidic processors that enable multi-stage fluidic reactions with suspended microparticles (e.g., microbeads and cells) to be performed autonomously could greatly extend the efficacy of lab-on-a-chip technologies. Here we present a single-layer microfluidic reactor that utilizes a microfluidic railing methodology to passively transport suspended microbeads and cells into distinct, adjacent laminar flow streams for rapid fluidic mixing and assaying. Four distinct molecular synthesis processes (i.e., consisting of 48 discrete fluidic mixing stages in total) were accomplished on polystyrene microbead substrates (15 mm in diameter) in parallel, without the need for external observation or regulation during device operation. Experimental results also revealed successful railing of suspended bovine aortic endothelial cells (approximately 13 to 17 mm in diameter). The presented railing system provides an effective continuous flow methodology to achieve bead-based and cell-based microfluidic reactors for applications including point-of-care (POC) molecular diagnostics, pharmacological screening, and quantitative cell biology. { Electronic Supplementary Information (ESI) available: Conceptual illustrations and results for device microfabrication, COMSOL Multiphysics models and fluid dynamics simulations, experimental results for limiting diffusion-based mixing and immobilizing select numbers of microbeads within devices, and movies of microbead and cell handling. See

Design, Fundamental Principles of Fabrication and Applications of Microreactors

Processes

This study highlights the development of small-scale reactors, in the form of microstructures with microchannel networking. Microreactors have achieved an impressive reputation, regarding chemical synthesis ability and their applications in the engineering, pharmaceutical, and biological fields. This review elaborates on the fabrication, construction, and schematic fundamentals in the design of the microreactors and microchannels. The materials used in the fabrication or construction of the microreactors include silicon, polymer, and glass. A general review of the application of microreactors in medical, biological, and engineering fields is carried out and significant improvements in these areas are reported. Finally, we highlight the flow patterns, mixing, and scaling-up of multiphase microreactor developments, with emphasis on the more significant industrial applications.

Three-dimensional structuration of zero-shrinkage LTCC ceramics for microfluidic applications

Microelectronics Reliability, 2009

In this paper, a simple and repeatable method for realization of microfluidic channels in zero-shrinkage LTCC Green Tape TM system (Heraeus Ò HL2000, Germany) is presented. This method is basing on two-step lamination process and use of sacrificial volume material (SVM). Three different fugitive materials are taken into account: high purity carbon paste, carbon tape (Thick Film Technologies, USA) and cetyl alcohol. The methods of analysis such as TGA (thermo-gravimetric analysis) and SEM (scanning electron microscope) are used to characterize this new fabrication process of microfluidic channels in zero-shrinkage LTCC ceramics.

Continuous flow synthesis of nanoparticles using ceramic microfluidic devices

Nanotechnology, 2010

A microfluidic system based on the low-temperature co-fired ceramics technology (LTCC) is proposed to reproducibly carry out a simple one-phase synthesis and functionalization of monodispersed gold nanoparticles. It takes advantage of the LTCC technology, offering a fast prototyping without the need to use sophisticated facilities, reducing significantly the cost and production time of microfluidic systems. Some other interesting advantages of the ceramic materials compared to glass, silicon or polymers are their versatility and chemical resistivity. The technology enables the construction of multilayered systems, which can integrate other mechanical, electronic and fluidic components in a single substrate. This approach allows rapid, easy, low cost and automated synthesis of the gold colloidal, thus it becomes a useful approach in the progression from laboratory scale to pilot-line scale processes, which is currently demanded.

Fine structuration of low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) microreactors

Lab on a chip, 2015

The development of microreactors that operate under harsh conditions is always of great interest for many applications. Here we present a microfabrication process based on low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology for producing microreactors which are able to perform chemical processes at elevated temperature (>400 °C) and against concentrated harsh chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid. Various micro-scale cavities and/or fluidic channels were successfully fabricated in these microreactors using a set of combined and optimized LTCC manufacturing processes. Among them, it has been found that laser micromachining and multi-step low-pressure lamination are particularly critical to the fabrication and quality of these microreactors. Demonstration of LTCC microreactors with various embedded fluidic structures is illustrated with a number of examples, including micro-mixers for studies of exothermic reactions, multiple-injection microreactors...