Roll-to-roll manufacturing of low cost diagnostics: examples of optical and microfluidic structures

Traditionally, the primary function of printing has been the delivery of data and information for visual inspection and further interpretation by humans or machines. The advantage of printing is that it enables cost efficient mass manufacturing of electronics and other functionalities on large and flexible substrates like plastic, paper and fabrics. New printable functional materials, print production processes and reading mechanisms are expanding the role and function of printing toward printed intelligence. This is the opportunity gap between traditional paper, packaging and printing industry products and ICT/electronics industry products and can be realised for example as disposable sensors, simple 'electronic' components and circuits, large area functional paper like intelligent products, smart packages, etc.Ageing population in Europe will increasingly burden the health care system, e.g. chronic diseases are becoming more and more common and are influencing the quality of life of rapidly increasing number of people. New solutions for low cost and distributed biomolecular recognition measurements are required to reduce the number of costly laboratory tests, hospital controls and idle visits to general practices.Recent developments of hot embossed microfluidics and optics, has made it possible to fabricate functional components by roll-to-roll techniques. In this presentation, we show our current achievements for manufacturing low cost immunosensors for point-of-care and home care applications through examples of microfluidic and optical structures.