Purpose: Microneedle patches are arrays of tiny needles that painlessly pierce the skin to deliver medication into\nthe body. Biocompatible microneedles are usually fabricated via molding of a master structure. Microfabrication\ntechniques used for fabricating these master structures are costly, time intensive, and require extensive expertise to\ncontrol the structureâ??s geometry of the structure, despite evidence that microneedle geometry is a key design\nparameter. Here, a commercially available 3D printer is utilized, for the first time, to quickly and easily manufacture\nmicroneedle masters.\nDesign/methodology/approach: Because commercially available 3D printers are not typically used for micron-scale\nfabrication, the influence of three different sources of error- stair-stepping, aliasing, and light abberations- on the\nresulting structure is investigated. A custom Matlab code is written to control the light intensity projected off of each\nindividual micromirror (through grayscale) at a given time. The effect of the layer height, the number of layers, and\ngrayscale on the sharpness, surface texture, and dimensional fidelity of the final structure is described.\nFindings: The Autodesk Ember is successfully utilized to fabricate sharp microneedles with a tip radius of approximately\n15 micron in less than 30min per patch (as compared to weeks to months for existing approaches). Utilization of grayscale\nimproves surface texture and sharpness, and dimensional fidelityâ?¦â?¦.
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