A Micro Device for Blood/Plasma Separation as an Example of a Successful Development and Fabrication Strategy

摘要

The strategy for a successful product development in the micro system market is a demand driven development instead of one driven by the capabilities of a technology. The real challenge is providing sophisticated technical solutions and the capabilities for fabrication and integration into preexisting systems as well. A lot of prototypes have been developed in recent years that fail the last step of transfer to a product. This work demonstrates a successful development and fabrication of a microfluidic device for blood/plasma separation as a part of a technology platform for blood analysis. Conditions for a successful and efficient realization of such a project are a simultaneous engineering strategy, well-trained engineers with expert knowledge, and precise objectives for the final product. The novel blood/plasma separation technique is based on a simple microchannel bend structure. The mold fabrication by an enhanced UV-LIGA process and polymer replication by injection molding enable an easy and quick fabrication of a series of chips in the preferred polymer material and with preferred surface characteristics. This facilitates the evaluation of the chip application at an early stage in the development process. Due to fast and cost effective processing, different designs can be tested before a final decision on a fluidic design is made . This means more efficient design validations, reduced product development costs, and saved product development times. The separation device performs the required specifications of the final blood diagnostic system with blood cell separation efficiencies of more than 95 % and a plasma yield of 10%.