Teach your microscope how to print: Low-cost and rapid-iteration microfabrication for biology
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Abstract
The application of traditional microfabrication techniques to biological research is hindered by their reliance on clean rooms, expensive or toxic materials, and slow iteration cycles. We present an accessible microfabrication workflow that addresses these challenges by integrating consumer 3D printing techniques and repurposing standard fluorescence microscopes equipped with DMDs for maskless photolithography. Our method achieves micrometer-scale precision across centimeter-sized areas without clean room infrastructure, using affordable and readily available consumables. We demonstrate the versatility of this approach through four biological applications: inducing cytoskeletal protrusions via 1 μm-resolution surface topographies; micropatterning to standardize cell and tissue morphology; fabricating multilayer microfluidic devices for confined cell migration studies; imprinting agar chambers for long-time tracking of C. elegans . Our protocol drastically reduces material costs compared to conventional methods and enables design-to-device turnaround within a day. By leveraging open-source microscope control software and existing lab equipment, our workflow lowers the entry barrier to micro-fabrication, enabling labs to prototype custom solutions for diverse experimental needs while maintaining compatibility with soft lithography and downstream biological assays.
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Looking ahead, future efforts will focus on developing lower-cost hardware solutions to further democratize access to microfabrication techniques. Digital light processing (DLP) printers contain much of the necessary hardware (UV lamp, driver board, DMD)
I'm really looking forward to seeing how this goes and would be interested in building one myself!
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The use of 3D printing resin as a substitute for SU-8 eliminates time-sensitive baking steps and reduces the need for extensive glass slide cleaning.
I think its great to be able to use 3D printer resin and still get high quality structures. I'd be curious to see a comparison of devices made with SU-8 vs 3D printer resin using this maskless approach, are there still benefits to SU-8 that make investing in the proper safety equipment worth it? It would also be interesting to see if there is still any benefit to using silicon over glass
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