Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA)-based diagnosis is the mainstay for measuring antibody response in infectious diseases and to support pathogen identification of potential use in infectious disease outbreaks and clinical care of individual patients. The development of laboratory diagnostics using readily available 3D printing technologies provides a timely opportunity for further expansion of this technology into immunodetection systems. Utilizing available 3D printing platforms, a ‘3D well’ was designed and developed to have an increased surface area compared to those of 96-well plates. The ease and rapidity of the development of the 3D well prototype provided an opportunity for its rapid validation through the diagnostic performance of ELISA in infectious disease without modifying current laboratory practices for ELISA. The improved sensitivity of the 3D well of up to 2.25-fold higher compared to the 96-well ELISA provides a potential for the expansion of this technology towards miniaturization and Lab-On-a-Chip platforms to reduce time, volume of reagents and samples needed for such assays in the laboratory diagnosis of infectious and other diseases including applications in other disciplines.

To investigate the underlying mechanism of the effects of surface texturing on lubricated sliding friction in the metal forming operation, an in-situ observation system using transparent silica glass dies and a high speed recording camera was newly developed. To correlate the dimensional parameters of micro-dimple textured structures and tribological properties in the metal forming operation, the in-situ observation was performed during bending with the ironing process of the stainless steel sheet with a thickness of 0.1 mm. The lubrication behavior were compared between the different lubricant viscosities and the micro-dimple textures with different diameters of 10 µm, 50 µm, 100 µm fabricated by using femto-/pico-second laser processing. As a result, the textured die with dimple diameters of 10 µm and 50 µm showed the lubricant flow transferred from one to the other dimples owing to the lubricant reservoir effect, while that of 100 µm indicated the less supply of the lubricant. However, the textured die with a dimple diameter of 10 µm demonstrated higher ironing force than that of 50 µm, due to the severe adhesion of work materials inside the dimple structures. Based on these experimental findings, the dimple size dependencies on lubricant reservoirs effects and the generation of the hydrodynamic pressure were discussed by correlating with the in-situ observation results, a fluid-flow analysis and a laminar two-phase flow analysis using the finite element method.