Employing the centrifugal force for liquid displacement in bioanalytical compact discs (CDs) is becoming more popular for academic and industry applications. Pseudo forces that are controlled by a low-cost spindle motor enables the simultaneous manipulation of several liquids on the microfluidic CD. For this reason, centrifugal microfluidic platforms are considered more robust for extreme point of care (ePOC) applications when compared to stationary microfluidic systems that work with mechanical liquids pumps (e.g., syringe pump). However, the fabrication of microfluidic CDs requires expensive and bulky equipment (e.g., router or laser CNC) that cannot be implemented at ePOC and point of need (PON). To cope with this limitation, we have introduced a rapid microfluidic CD fabrication technique using only a low-cost cutter plotter [1]. The CDs were made through assembly of thin PVC and double-sided pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) layers that were cut by the plotter machine. However, the technique yet required careful assembly of several disc layers, and the double-sided PSA is an expensive material and not widely available. In this article, we introduce a new origami CD fabrication process using only one type of material, a cutter plotter and a laminating machine. The origami CDs fabrication process prevents the need for PSA film and the tedious/sensitive CD assembly procedure. Therefore, the origami CDs facilitates onsite development of automated diagnosis test at ePOC and PON with minimum and widely available material and equipment. In addition to the origami CD fabrication process, this study includes the characterization of different microchannels made by the cutter plotter blade. Finally, as an application of the CD fabrication technique we developed an origami CD for automated serial dilution that is required for a wide range of bioanalytical applications such as microbial counting and multiplexed assay.

[1] M.M. Aeinehvand, P. Magaña, M.S. Aeinehvand, O. Aguilar, M.J. Madou, S.O. Martinez-Chapa, Ultra-rapid and low-cost fabrication of centrifugal microfluidic platforms with active mechanical valves, RSC Adv. 7 (2017) 55400–55407. doi:10.1039/C7RA11532F.