Fabrication technology of PDMS based cylindrical and structured microchannels for LOC

摘要

Cylindrically shaped microchannels are still challenging in lab-on-a-chip applications because of more laminar flow of biological samples and reagents inside. A simple, cheap and flexible technology to fabricate cylindrical and structured microchannels in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is presented here. We proposed an unconventional method, where photoresist of appropriate viscosity can be drawn into thin fibers of cylindrical shape at room temperature and formatted into various microfluidic channel templates. Also we present unique technology of patterning the prepared photoresist fiber by optical interference lithography. By embedding process of patterned photoresist fiber in liquid PDMS we obtained very interesting structured microchannels. The photoresist fibers and embossed PDMS microchannels exhibit excellent mechanical and surface characteristics suitable for microchannel structures and passive micromixers. Prepared microchannel structures are good candidates for using in different microfluidic and biomedical systems for simple integration on the PDMS based chips.