Maskless microlithography ("The Gutenberg-Project")
The quick and flexible production of microfluidic chips and components is very important for microfluidic research. To ensure a high experimental throughput it is of great importance to keep the time between a theoretical concept and a real prototype as short as possibe (so called concept-to-chip times).
For this purpose the group developed a maskless stereolithography system based on a digital mirror device (DMD). The DMD consists of 1024x786 micromirrors which can be individualy addressed via software. This allows the generation of dynamic light patterns on any surface (dynamic masks), which can be used for structuring photoactive materials and resists. The system doesn’t need any expensive static masks as lithography machines usually do.
Associated Publications
Journal Papers
M. Mader, O. Schlatter, B. Heck, A. Warmbold, A. Dorn, H. Zappe, P. Risch, D. Helmer, F. Kotz, B. E. Rapp: “High-throughput injection molding of transparent fused silica glass”, Science, 2021 | Link
F. Kotz, A. S. Quick, P. Risch, T. Martin, T. Hoose, M. Thiel, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “Two‐Photon Polymerization of Nanocomposites for the Fabrication of Transparent Fused Silica Glass Microstructures”, Advanced Materials, 33, 9, 2006341, 2021 | Link
F. Kotz, M. Mader, N. Dellen, P. Risch, A. Kick, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “Fused deposition modeling of microfluidic chips in polymethylmethacrylate”, Micromachines, 11(9), 873, 2020. | Link
F. Kotz, P. Risch, K. Arnold, S. Sevim, J. Puigmarti-Luis, A. Quick, M. Thiel, A. Hrynevich, P. Dalton, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “Fabrication of arbitrary three-dimensional suspended hollow microstructures in transparent fused silica glass”, Nature Communication, 10, 1439, 2019 | Link
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F. Kotz, N. Schneider, A. Striegel, A. Wolfschläger, N. Keller, M. Worgull, W. Bauer, D. Schild, M. Milich, C. Greiner, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “Glassomer: Processing Fused Silica Glass like a Polymer”, Advanced Materials, 30, 1707100, 2018 F. Kotz, P. Risch, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “Highly Fluorinated Methacrylates for Optical 3D Printing of Microfluidic Devices”, Micromachines, 9, 3, 15, 2018 (invited) | Link
V. Kappings, C. Grün, D. Ivannikov, I. Hebeiss, S. Kattge, I. Wendland, B. E. Rapp, M. Hettel, O. Deutschmann, U. Schepers: "vasQchip: A novel microfluidic artificial blood vessel scaffold for vascularized 3D tissues", Advanced Materials Technologies (impact factor: to be announced), 3, 1700246, 2018| Link
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D. Helmer, A. Voigt, S. Wagner, N. Keller, K. Sachsenheimer, F. Kotz, T. M. Nargang, B. E. Rapp: "Suspended Liquid Subtractive Lithography: One-step generation of 3D channel geometries in viscous curable polymer matrices", Nature Scientific Reports 7, 7387, 2017 | Link
F. Kotz, K. Arnold, W. Bauer, D. Schild, N. Keller, K. Sachsenheimer, T. M. Nargang, C. Richter, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: "Three-dimensional Printing of Transparent Fused Silica Glass", Nature, 544, 337-339, 2017 | Link | Video | Media Coverage
F. Kotz, K. Plewa, W. Bauer, N. Schneider, N. Keller, T. Nargang, D. Helmer, K. Sachsenheimer, M. Schäfer, M. Worgull, C. Greiner, C. Richter, B. E. Rapp: “Liquid Glass: A Facile Soft Replication Method for Structuring Glass”, Advanced Materials, 28, 4646-4650, 2016 Media Coverage | Link
E. Wilhelm, K. Deshpande, F. Kotz, D. Schild, N. Keller, S. Heissler, K. Sachsenheimer, K. Länge, C. Neumann, B. E. Rapp: “Polysiloxane layers created by sol-gel and photochemistry: Ideal surfaces for rapid, low-cost and high-strength bonding of epoxy components to polydimethylsiloxane”, Lab Chip, 15, 1772-1782, 2015 | Link
T. M. Nargang, L. Brockmann, P. Nikolov, D. Schild, D. Helmer, N. Keller, K. Sachsenheimer, E. Wilhelm, L. Pires, M. Dirschka, A. Kolew, M. Worgull, S. Giselbrecht, C. Neumann, B. E. Rapp: “Liquid polystyrene: a room-temperature photocurable soft lithography compatible pour-and-cure-type polystyrene”, Lab Chip (special issue “Emerging Investigators"), 14, 2698-2708, 2014 | Link
E. Wilhelm, C. Neumann, K. Sachsenheimer, T. Schmitt, K. Länge, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid bonding of polydimethylsiloxane to stereolithographically manufactured epoxy components using a photogenerated intermediary layer”, Lab Chip, 13, 2268, 2013 | Link
A. Waldbaur, P. Hettich, B. Carneiro, B. E. Rapp: “Computer Aided Microfluidics (CAMF) - From Digital 3D-CAD Models to Physical Structures within a Day”, Microfluidics and Nanofluidics, 15, 625-635, 2013 | Link
Reviews
F. Kotz, P. Risch, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “High-performance materials for 3D printing in chemical synthesis applications”, Advanced Materials (invited), 2019 |Link|
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Books and Book chapters
Conference Contributions
F. Kotz, P. Risch, M. Thiel, A. Quick, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “Sacrificial Template Replication: Fabrication of arbitrary 3D microfluidic channels in transparent fused silica glass”, talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, USA, 2020
F. Kotz, L. Kneißl, P. Risch, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid prototyping of alumina-based microfluidic reactors”, talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, USA, 2020
“Facile integration of electronics in glass microfluidic devices for electrochemical synthesis and analysis”, talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, USA, 2020
P. Risch, F. Kotz, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: „3D printing of highly fluorinated methacrylates for the rapid prototyping of transparent and chemically-resistant microfluidic devices”, talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, 2019.
K. Sachsenheimer, P. Risch, F. Kotz, C. Richter, B. E. Rapp, "Self-powered microfluidic sensing platform based on integrated microfluidic battery", poster, 22nd International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2018.
P. Risch, F. Kotz, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: "3D printing of highly fluorinated methacrylates for the fabrication of transparent and chemically resistant microfluidic devices", poster, 22nd International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2018.
P. Risch, F. Kotz, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: "3D printing of microfluidic glass reactors", poster, 22nd International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2018.
D. Helmer, A. Voigt, B. E. Rapp: "Suspended Liquid Subtractive Lithography (SLSL) – 3D printing of microfluidic structures directly into PDMS", 21st International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Savannah, USA, 2017
F. Kotz, P. Risch, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid prototyping of microfluidic chips in polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA)”, talk, Mikrosystemtechnik Kongress (MST), München, Germany, 2017
F. Kotz, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: "3D printing of microfluidic devices in highly fluorinated perfluoropolyethers (PFPE)", poster, 21st International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Savannah, USA, 2017
C. Richter, N. Kirschner, M. Worgull, B. E. Rapp: "Fast and cheap fabrication of molding tools for polymer replication", talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, USA, 2017| Link
F. Kotz, K. Arnold, B. E. Rapp: "Three-dimensional Printing of Transparent Fused Silica Microfluidic Chips", talk, 21st International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Savannah, USA, 2017
D. Helmer, A. Voigt, S. Wagner, B. E. Rapp: "Rapid printing in PDMS – fused deposition modeling (FDM) meets microfluidics", talk, 20th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Dublin, Ireland, 2016
F. Kotz, K. Arnold, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid manufacturing of microfluidic chips in glass”, poster, 20th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Dublin, Ireland, 2016
F. Kotz, K. Plewa, C. Richter, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid prototyping of microfluidic chips in glass using a soft-lithography-compatible manufacturing process”, poster, 19th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Gyeongju, Korea, 2015
T. M. Nargang, E. Wilhelm, F. Kotz, D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: “UV-light based structuring of unbreakable hydrophobic barriers on commonly used papers”, poster, 19th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Gyeongju, Korea, 2015
F. Kotz, C. Richter, B. E. Rapp: "’Liquid PMMA’: rapid prototyping of microfluidic structures in polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) via direct lithography", poster, 19th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Gyeongju, Korea, 2015
F. Kotz, K. Plewa, W. Bauer, T. Hanemann, A. Waldbaur, E. Wilhelm, C. Neumann, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid prototyping of glass microfluidic chips”, talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, USA, 2015| Link
F. Kotz, C. Richter, B. E. Rapp: “A new rapid prototyping method for the fabrication of microfluidic chips in glass”, poster, Gordon Research Conference, Mount Snow, USA, 2015
T. M. Nargang, L. Brockmann, P. Nikolov, D. Schild, D. Helmer, N. Keller, M. Dirschka, A. Kolew, M. Worgull, S. Giselbrecht, C. Neumann, B. E. Rapp: “‘Liquid polystyrene’: a photocurable liquid polystyrene prepolymer as new material for microfluidic prototyping”, poster, 18th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), San Antonio, USA, 2014
E. Wilhelm, C. Neumann, K. Sachsenheimer, K. Länge, B. E. Rapp: “Rapid bonding of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to various stereolithographically (STL) structurable epoxy resins using photochemically cross-linked intermediary siloxane layers”, talk, SPIE Photonics West, San Francisco, USA, 2014| Link
A. Waldbaur, B. Carneiro, P. Hettich, B. E. Rapp: “Computer Aided Microfluidics (CAMF) – high-resolution projection lithography for the rapid creation of large-scale microfluidic structures”, poster, 16th International Conference on Miniaturized Systems for Chemistry and Life Sciences (µTAS), Okinawa, Japan, 2012
Patents
B. E. Rapp, D. Helmer, A. Voigt: "Verfahren und Vorrichtung zur Erzeugung einer dreidimensionalen Struktur in einer Matrix", DE102016219192, 2016 | Link.
B. E. Rapp, D. Helmer, A. Voigt: "Method and apparatus for generating a three-dimensional structure in a matrix“, EP3305495A1, 2016 | Link.
B. E. Rapp, F. Kotz: "Transparentes Quarzglas für die additive Fertigung", DE102016012003, 2016 | Link.
B. E. Rapp, F. Kotz: "Composition and process for producing a molded article of high-purity, transparent quartz glass by means of additive manufacturing”, WO2018065093, 2016 | Link.
B. E. Rapp, M. Worgull, M. Heckele, "Verfahren zur Herstellung von Durchbrüchen in thermoplastischen Komponenten", DE102005025247B3, 2007 | Link
Miscellaneous
D. Helmer, B. E. Rapp: "Healthcare Material Platforms", HEALTH 2, Paneuropean Network, 2017. The NeptunLab is features on the cover page of the issue | Link | Cover