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In this work, a Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) multiparameter sensor for simultaneous determination of refractive index and temperature was manufactured through a novel and low-cost approach. A polymer planar optical structure was realized via inkjet 3D printing, by using photo-curable resins having tailored refractive index for device’s core and cladding, respectively. The multiparameter sensor was fully designed, manufactured, and experimentally tested to check the numerical analyses run on a preliminary phase. In such a way, a temperature resolution equal to about 0.5°C and a refractive index resolution equal to about 2 x 10^-4 RIU were obtained. Next, even a quality control analysis of the 3D printed surface was carried out by following a novel approach that relies on the profile monitoring technique, with the aim to evaluate the suitability of the design and the geometric accuracy control. In addition, thanks to the cost analysis performed through a properly model, it was proved that the multiparameter sensor designed, manufactured and tested satisfies the low – cost requirements, being the estimated cost ~ 23 €, which is an absolutely competitive cost if compared with other traditional sensors. In the end, even the performance of the sensor in terms of bulk sensitivity (equal to about 900 nm/RIU) resulted to be higher than similar devices already presented in the state – of – the – art, thus proving the validity of the developed SPR multiparameter sensor both in economic and performance terms.

In this work, the use of Projection Micro Stereolithography (PmSL) to 3D print a micro-optofluidic device for two-phase slug flow detection is presented. For comparison purposes a PDMS based device obtained by casting was also manufactured. The micro-optofluidic device has a microfluidic T-junction with a micro-optical section that consists of two optical fiber insertions used for two-phase slug flow detection. The working principle in the detection is based on a different light transmission correlated to the fluid interfering with the laser beam in a micro-channel section. The 3D printed material is fully characterized in terms of its surface properties and compared to PDMS used for standard construction using a master-slave casting procedure. The two devices were tested after the setup parameters for the detection were optimized using ANOVA for the 3D printed device. The comparisons of the two devices revealed that 3D printed device can be used for two-phase slug flow detection but future research is still need to obtain a 3D printed resin allowing to outperform PDMS.