Fabrication of Graphene/PDMS Nanocomposites for Optical Heating on Microfluidic Chips

摘要

Graphene, a two-dimensional monoatomic thick carbon layer, is proposed as a novel nano-scale optical heater by uniformly dispersing it in PDMS matrix and subsequntly a simple, fast and localized heating method on the microfluidic chips made out of the nanocomposites is domonstrated. The dodecylamine-modified graphene (C12- rGO) was well-dispersed in PDMS suspension to form uniform C12-rGO/PDMS nanocomposite du to the presence of the long dodecyl chain. Microfluidic channels can readily be fabricated by standard soft lithography out of the composite. The prepared chips with low graphene contents exhibit pronounced temperature increase in few minutes at very low power illumination. Our studies illustrated that Graphene/PDMS nanocomposite can serve as a practical optical heating platform for microfluidic chips with the advantages of simple, low-cost and high efficiency.