Whether you say ‘lay-go’, ‘leg-oh’, or ‘lee-go’, we can all agree that LEGO is pretty awesome. Personally, my childhood was filled with LEGO houses and castles, tower building competitions, and shredded fingernails from trying to prise apart small plates (did you know they have a tool for that now?). One of the best things about LEGO is that you can create almost anything, from giant sculptures to a working mechanical keyboard. But who knew LEGO could be so versatile that it could be used to build a tiny, modular, microfluidics lab? Microfluidics is basically the manipulation of fluids on a really small scale. Fluids are moved, mixed, separated or otherwise processed through tiny capillaries on the sub-millimetre scale. This can be used for things like enzymatic analysis, DNA sequencing, continuous testing for pathogens or toxins, and many other biological, optical and chemical applications. Microfluidic devices usually take the form of a ‘lab on a chip’ – a tiny, flat surface etched with channels and ports to manipulate the flow, mixing, and separating of the fluid. However, the problem with this is that so far there’s no universally accepted way to construct this device, meaning each one needs to be custom synthesised for its purpose, and it’s hard to mix and match devices. On top of that, they’re not exactly easy to make either as 3D printing is not yet precise enough for this purpose so construction usually requires expensive facilities, materials and labour. An alternative method is to use a modular system, that is, each module performs a single function. And scientists at MIT have found a novel platform: LEGO bricks. In their recent paper, published in Lab on a Chip (cool journal name btw), Crystal Owens and John Hart explored the use of LEGO bricks to build a microfluidic platform. They went out to the shop and bought an off-the-shelf LEGO set, and used a micromilling technique to precisely etch tiny channels into the bricks. To seal the faces, the bricks were covered in a thin plastic film, and brick modules were joined via an O-ring. Because LEGO bricks are so consistent in size and fit together easily, the O-rings formed reliable and reversible seals that allow the microfluidic device to be literally ‘clicked’ together. While this system is cheap to build and extremely reliable, it isn’t perfect yet. Firstly, the micromilled channels are relatively large and not suitable for many applications. They’re also made of plastic so they wouldn’t be suitable to use with some organic solvents. Future work will look at different types of materials and different ways of constructing the bricks so they can be used for a wider range of applications. But for now, a LEGO ‘lab on a brick’ could be the future of prototyping these tiny microfluidic devices.
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Emi Schutz Archives
March 2018
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