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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2020 Apr 15.
Published in final edited form as: Trends Analyt Chem. 2018 Jul 5;106:37–52. doi: 10.1016/j.trac.2018.06.013

Fig. 2.

Fig. 2.

Illustration of common challenges faced with 3D printing tools. Printing fluidic networks on a single device using FDM technology usually result in reagent leakage as shown in (a)24. Carefully choosing a polymeric material is very crucial as variants of same material from different vendors may result in significant structural differences as visible in (b)27. Ultimaker Transparent, Ultimaker Translucent, Innofil, and InnoPET were employed to print optically clear cuvettes demonstrating this variation against a standard PMMA cuvette (adapted from ref [37] with permission). In (c & d) the SEM image shows effective replication of structural inaccuracies on the 3D-printed molds (c) on the PDMS casts (d).