Soft substrate as a sacrificial layer for fabrication free-standing SU-8-based nanofluidic system

摘要

In this paper, we describe a new fabrication process utilizing polydimethylesiloxane (PDMS) and polyester (PET) as a sacrificial substrate for fabricating free-standing SU-8-based nanofluidic system. The soft substrate permits SU-8 UV cured patterning and layer-to-layer bonding, and allows the SU-8 structures to be easily peeled off from the substrate after complete fabrication. In the process, PDMS-on glass is used as a handling wafer, on which SU-8 based trenches is imprinted by a flexible film mold using low-pressure nanoimprint lithography. The reservoir pattern of SU-8 is fabricated on the bonding layer, in which PET serves as substrate. The nanochannel is sealed by optimized bonding process, which is flexible and easily controllable with the use of soft substrate as a sacrificial layer. After bonding process, PDMS and PET could be easily peeled off from nanaofluidic system. The SEM results shows that the height of the fully enclosed nanochannels will be about hundreds nanometer. Large area of free standing SU-8 structure layers are successfully fabricated and peeled off from the soft substrate layer as single continuous sheets.