Fabrication of a Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Microfluidic Chip Using CO2 Laser and Hot Bonding Technologies
X-Y. Huo, S-X. Wang and X-Y. Chen
A simple and rapid method for fabrication of concentration gradient microfluidic devices on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate using a flexible and low cost CO2 laser system was proposed. the effects of the laser power and the traverse speed on the depth, width of the microchannels processed on PET substrate were studied. A number of experiments were carried out to find the appropriate parameters in the range of the set parameters for the machining of microchannels. Laser power was set from 6 to 22 W and traverse speed was set from 8 to 28 mm/s in the experiments. The results show the depth of the microchannels increases with the increase of the laser power at the same speed; however, the depth of the microchannel decreases with the increase of the velocity at the same laser power. The effect of the laser power and the traverse speed on the width of microchannels is the same as depth. The PET substrate microfluidic channels were encapsulated using a hot-press bonding technique. The experimental results show that obvious concentration gradient could be easily obtained in the device.
Keywords: CO2 laser, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), microfluidic chip, hot bonding, concentration gradient generator