MIT researchers developed a fabrication process to produce self-heating microfluidic devices in one step using a multi-material 3D printer. Pictured is an example of one of the devices. [Image courtesy of the researchers]
Researchers at MIT used 3D printing to create self-heating microfluidic devices, highlighting the potential for this technique in future applications.Microfluidics have uses in detecting diseases within tiny samples of blood or fluids, like in COVID-19 test kits. The team at MIT believes the technique could someday help rapidly create cheap but accurate disease detection tools.
According to MIT, many microfluidic applications require chemical reactions performed at specific temperatures. More complex devices of this nature have heating elements created in a difficult-to-scale fabrication process. To address this, the MIT team used multilateral 3D printing to create self-heating microfl…