Thermoplastic microfluidics for 3D cell culturing

Microfluidic platforms have recently become essential in cell studies since they can closely mimic the 3D cell culture environment. These platforms need to have hydrophilic, transparent, and biocompatible properties. Material selection, fabrication method, and bonding type are critical for biomedical studies to achieve these purposes. This thesis has focused on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) as materials for the formation of microfluidic chips with unique physical and chemical properties. The first part of the thesis focuses on PDMS chips produced by the soft lithography method and cell studies performed with these chips. In the second part, the leading research is based on the solvent bonding technique for forming PMMA chips. We did surface analyzes to investigate the quality of microfluidic platform building with thermoplastics. We found optimum parameters for temperature and solvent type for bonding PMMA microfluidics. The final version of this platform has allowed the creation of a functional environment for 3D cell culture work.