Fabrication of polymer micro needles for transdermal drug delivery system using DLP based projection stereo-lithography

Fabrication of micro needles, which reduce pain during insertion and lessen tissue injury, has recently attracted great interest. Different manufacturing systems have been utilized for the advancement of micro needles such as two-photon photo polymerization, bulk lithography, droplet-borne air blowing and injection molding [1]. This paper proposes a micro fabrication process for polymer micro needles, using DLP based projection-based stereo lithography that is capable of fabricating micro-needles using biocompatible polymers. The fabrication in the experimental setup is performed with continuous movement of the platform in the vertical direction hence good surface quality is obtained. The influence of polymerization time, light intensity of DLP projector and chemical composition of the resins on the production speed and the geometrical accuracy of the micro needles have been studied. The length and the tip diameter of the micro needle are shown to be controlled through these factors. The length and tip diameter of the fabricated micro needles were observed using SEM and optical microscope and measured to be around 520 μm and 40 μm, respectively. The results indicate that polymer micro needles with appropriate geometry can be fabricated using this technique. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.