Technologies for rapid prototyping of microfluidic devices for biological applications

The shy, early stages of the microfluidic field was primarily associated to the use of expensive and complex silicon and glass microfabricated devices. It was not until the start of the new millennium, when rapid prototyping polymer fabrication technologies were introduced, that the field begun to acquire widespread attention from researchers all over the world. In this presentation, the main rapid prototyping techniques for fabricating polymeric microfluidic devices will be reviewed. Examples of the application of these devices for the generation of nanomedicines and for cell culture experiments will be presented.