Roll manufacturing of polymer microfluidic devices using a roll embossing process

摘要

The replication of micro-fluidic devices is increasingly utilised in various industrial fields, such as medicine and cell biology research, and in many applications: drug screening, sugar testers, chemical microreactors, microprocessor cooling (just reward) and micro fuel cells. The roll embossing process (R2R) is an efficient and economical method for fabricating micro/meso-features on the large-area surface of the polymer parts. In this work, we describe a roll embossing process for manufacturing micro-fluidic devices in different commercially available thermoplastic polymer using a micro-structured elastomeric pattern with low roughness (R-a < 50 nm) as a roller stamping tool. This work investigates the effect of processing parameters on material performance for manufacturing the micro-fluidic devices via a roll embossing process. They describes observations and surface topography analyses made to compare the replication quality of polymeric replicas obtained by filling micro-cavities using the roll embossing process.