Direct-writing colloidal photonic crystal microfluidic chips by inkjet printing for label-free protein detection

Integrating photonic crystals (PC) into microfluidic systems has attracted immense interest for its novel functions. However, it is still a great challenge to fabricate PC microfluidic chips rapidly with complex functions. In this work, a direct-writing colloidal PC microchannel was firstly achieved by inkjet printing and was used for the surface-tension-confined microfluidic immune assay. PC channels with different structure colors have been successfully integrated on one chip. The fabricated chip has the advantages of rapid fabrication, quick fluidic transport and can monitor the fluidic fluxion using the naked eye. Utilizing this PC microfluidic chip, a colorimetric label-free immune assay was realized without nonspecific adsorption interference of the target.