3D-Printed Enclosure Wire-Guided Liquid Microfilm for Versatile Spectroscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces a 3D-printed wire-guided liquid microfilm device that enables versatile, stable, and reproducible spectroscopic measurements with tunable thicknesses, demonstrating broad applicability in Raman, fluorescence, and nonlinear spectroscopy.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel 3D-printed enclosure for producing stable, tunable liquid microfilms for spectroscopy, simplifying fabrication and enhancing reproducibility compared to traditional methods.

Findings

Microfilms with 25-180 μm thickness range and less than 1% deviation.

Stable microfilms maintained over ten hours.

Versatile application in Raman, fluorescence, and nonlinear spectroscopy.

Abstract

We present a 3D-printing-based design to produce wire-guided liquid microfilms that can be used for versatile spectroscopic applications. We demonstrate the ability of our instrument to provide optically useful liquid microfilms with highly tunable thicknesses over the range 25 - 180 $\mu$m, with standard temporal thickness deviation less than 1.0% on the low end of the range of flow rates, and spatially homogeneous microfilms that remain stable over the course of ten hours. We then show the device's versatility through its use in Raman, fluorescence, and nonlinear spectroscopy. Our approach is highly reproducible as a unique advantage of a 3D-printed enclosure and limited other components. The 3D-printable file for the enclosure is included in the supplementary materials. This innovation in design shows the feasibility of applying 3D-printing to physical and chemical instrumentation for faster adoption of experimental techniques.