Maskless fabrication of a microfluidic device with interdigitated electrodes on PCB using laser ablation

摘要

This paper reports the maskless fabrication of a microfluidic device with interdigitated electrodes (IDE) based on the technology of MicroElectroMechanical Systems on Printed Circuit Board (PCB-MEMS) and laser ablation. The device has flame retardant (FR)-4 resin as substrate, cooper (Cu) as active material and SU-8 polymer as structural material. By adjusting the laser parameters, Cu IDEs and SU-8 microchannels were successfully patterned onto the FR-4 substrate. The respective width, gap and overlap of the IDEs were 50 μm, 25 μm and 500 μm. The respective width, depth and length of the microchannels were 210 μm, 24.6 μm and 6.3 mm. The resolution and repeatability achieved in this approach, along with the low cost of the involved materials and techniques, enable an affordable micromachining platform with rapid fabrication-test cycle to develop active multiphysic microdevices with several applications in the fields of biosensing, cell culture, drug delivery, transport and sorting of molecules, among others.