ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Translational Pharmacology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fphar.2025.1582537
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvances in Microneedle Technology for Targeted Drug DeliveryView all 4 articles
3D Serpentine micromixer development for a microdosing system
Provisionally accepted
Ana Carolina Romo-Cardenas1,2Carlos Alberto Ruiz-Delgado1,2Paulo Cesar Calvo1,2
Luis Jesús Villarreal-Gómez3,4
Faruk Fonthal Rico1,2*- 1Autonomous University of Occident, Cali, Colombia
- 2Biomedical Engineering Research Group – GBIO, Cali, Colombia
- 3Universidad Autónoma de Baja California, Tijuana, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico
- 4Facultad de Ciencias de la Ingeniería y Tecnología, Tijuana, Mexico
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In the last decade, three-dimensional (3D) printing has been explored for various biomedical applications and the fabrication of micro-nano devices using additive manufacturing techniques. 3D printing has enabled the development of small devices (in the micrometre range) in the complex field of transdermal drug delivery devices (TD 3 ), improving how drugs are delivered without causing patients pain. This printing technology has allowed the development of microfluidic channels on TD 3 to expand rapidly towards channels with variable cross-sections (i.e., beyond simple rounded media with a constant diameter) and channels whose trajectory can be outside a single plane. It has also gained numerous macro-and nanoscale manufacturing advances. Employing 3D-printed templates for macroto-micro interfacing, a passively operated microfluidic device was designed. The research seeks to fabricate a biodevice that enables drug microdosing, creating a subsystem like a microvalve and a microchannel matrix using additive manufacturing and 3D printing techniques. A study of fluid dynamics for the design of the microdosing system was carried out using the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method. The microvalve has a spiral trajectory with four outlet channels distributed along it. These channels align with the microchannels organized in a 10 mm x 15 mm matrix with 25 microchannels, each with a 770 µm internal diameter, and are connected with a system of 25 microneedles (MNs). The system delivers a dose of 2.3 mL in 6 minutes. The study's primary challenge is achieving the diameters and lengths analyzed in the design and fabricating of this device using stereolithography (SLA) 3D printing technology.
Keywords: Stereolithography printing, Additive manufacturing, 3D printing, Serpentine micromixer, Microvalve
Received: 24 Feb 2025; Accepted: 12 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Romo-Cardenas, Ruiz-Delgado, Calvo, Villarreal-Gómez and Fonthal Rico. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Faruk Fonthal Rico, Autonomous University of Occident, Cali, Colombia
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