Nanostructures for all-polymer microfluidic systems

摘要

We present a process for fabricating nanostructured surfaces with feature sizes down to at least 50 nm and aspect ratios of 1:1 by injection molding. We explored the effects of mold coatings and injection molding conditions on the final nanostructure quality. A plasma-polymerized fluorocarbon based antistiction coating was found to improve the replication fidelity (shape and depth) of nanoscale features substantially. Arrays of holes of 50 nm diameter/35 nm depth and 100 nm/100 nm diameter, respectively, were mass-produced in cyclic olefin copolymer (Topas 5013) by injection molding. Polymer microfluidic channel chip parts resulted from a separate injection molding process. The microfluidic chip part and the nanostructured chip part were successfully bonded to form a sealed microfluidic system using air plasma assisted thermal bonding.