Integration of glass micropipettes with a 3D printed aligner for microfluidic flow cytometer

•A facile strategy for fabrication of a microflow cytometer was reported.•Two existing technologies, micropipettes and 3D printing, were used in the same optofluidic platform.•Scattered optical signals obtained from microparticles of uniform size prove that particles were hydrodynamically focused.•The presented device is ultra-low cost, and easy to fabricate and operate. In this study, a facile strategy for fabricating a microfluidic flow cytometer using two glass micropipettes with different sizes and a 3D printed millifluidic aligner was presented. Particle confinement was achieved by hydrodynamic focusing using a single sample and sheath flow. Device performance was extracted using the forward and side-scattered optical signals obtained using fiber-coupled laser and photodetectors. The 3-D printing assisted glass capillary microfluidic device is ultra-low-cost, not labor-intensive and takes less than 10 min to fabricate. The present device offers a great alternative to conventional benchtop flow cytometers in terms of optofluidic configuration.