Development of fabric-based microfluidic devices by wax printing

Fabric has emerged as an alternative to paper for the fabrication of microfluidic devices. Fabric could be easily manufactured using various natural and synthetic materials that contain a wide variety of functional groups, which can participate in binding to different types of molecules without further functionalization. To allow a rapid fabrication of more sophisticated fabric-based devices, we demonstrate that a commercial wax printer can be used to print 2D and 3D devices on fabric, followed by melting wax into fabric with heat treatment. The heating temperature and time were optimized to create the devices. The relationship between the width of the originally printed lines and the formed hydrophobic barriers was also investigated. The developed microfluidic fabric-based analytical devices show great potentials for real-life applications using colorimetric assay.