3D printing of porous liquid handling device

A method for three-dimensional printing of a porous device for liquid handling, the porous device comprising hydrophobic sections delineating one or more interconnected chambers and/or channels enabling the capillary transport of hydrophilic fluids, the method being a method without sintering and comprising:

• (a) providing a printing device comprising:
• means for spreading a dry powder of a particulate material on a powder bed surface,
• one or more depositing outlets for depositing at least one printing liquid on the powder bed surface,
• a computing unit that controls movement of the depositing outlets relative to the powder bed surface, wherein the printing device allows for selectively depositing one or more printing liquids on the powder bed and,
• a printing liquid comprising a hydrophobizing agent and a binder agent suitable for binding powder material;
• (b) spreading a layer of dry powder of a particulate material over a powder plate in order to create a powder bed;
• (c) depositing the printing liquid at predetermined positions on the powder bed, thereby binding the powder particles and providing hydrophobic sections on the powder particles;
• (d) lowering the powder bed and spreading an additional layer of dry powder of the particulate material, wherein the dry powder is applied on the underlying layer obtained in (c);
• and
• (e) repeating (c) and (d) until the porous device is formed, whereby at each repetition of (c) an additional layer of the porous device is formed and wherein at least part of the powder of the particulate material of the powder bed is bound to bound material of the layer formed in (c);
• wherein the binding of layers results from the directed depositing of the binder agent, and the depositing of the hydrophobizing agent results in delineating one or more interconnected chambers and/or channels within the hydrophobic sections, whereby the chambers and/or channels are filled with a hydrophilic particulate material enabling capillary transport of hydrophilic fluids in between the hydrophilic particulate material.