Complete Digital Fabrication of Polymeric Microsieves

We report on the substitution of a fabrication step for the manufacture of polymeric microsieves, carried out manually so far, by an inkjet printing technology. As published previously [1] the microsieves are manufactured by using a solution of Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) in chloroform. However, this solution is not printable with an inkjet printer due to its high vapor pressure. Hence, the PMMA solution was replaced by a commercially available UV curable ink to enable inkjet printing. This variation of the ink leads to a UV exposure driven fabrication method enabling the prospective production of microsieves with an automated high throughput manufacturing. Additionally, the digital fabrication character of inkjet printing allows the manufacture of customized microsieves for given filtration application requirements like size selectivity and mechanical stability.