Microfluidics is Key to Mass-Producing Nanomaterials

Advanced Manufacturing INSIDER

Nanoparticles form in a 3D-printed microfluidic channel. Each droplet shown here is about 250 micrometers in diameter, and contains billions of platinum nanoparticles. (Richard Brutchey and Noah Malmstadt/USC)

Nanoparticles can be found in everything from drug-delivery formulations to high-definition televisions. They’re also expensive and a pain to make. Researchers at USC have created a new way to manufacture nanoparticles that will transform the process from a painstaking, batch-by-batch drudgery into a large-scale, automated assembly line.

The team 3D printed tubes about 250 micrometers in diameter, which they believe to be the smallest, fully enclosed 3-D printed tubes anywhere. They then built a parallel network of four of these tubes, side-by-side, and ran a combination of two nonmixing fluids (like oil and water) through them.

As the two fluids fought to get out through the openings, they squeezed off tiny droplets. Each of these droplets acted as a micro-scale chemical reactor in which materials were mixed and nanoparticles were generated. Each microfluidic tube can create millions of identical droplets that perform the same reaction.

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