CO2-assisted thermal fusion bonding of heterogeneous materials by use of surface nano-pillars

Abstract

Microchip components may involve different polymeric materials for integrated functions, and the thermal bonding of heterogeneous materials is a challenge. This study is devoted to the bonding of polycarbonate (PC) and polymethacrylate (PMMA) materials. For conventional thermal bonding of PC and PMMA, the temperature must be above 150°C. CO 2 is used as a plasticizer to lower the bonding temperature to 90°C. CO 2 also serves as a pressurizing agent to provide uniform bonding pressure. To further improve the bonding strength, surface nano-pillar structures are fabricated on PC before binding it with PMMA. Because of the nano-pillar structures, the contact areas significantly increased, and the structural inter-lock further increased the strength after bonding thereby yielding a bonding strength of 1.20 MPa.

Using Stereolithographic Printing to Manufacture Monolithic Microfluidic Devices with an Extremely High Aspect Ratio

“…The term additive manufacturing refers to the additive manufacture of solid three-dimensional objects layer by layer under precise digital control. This approach to manufacturing has also been applied to the rapid prototyping of polymeric microfluidic devices without the need for conventional bonding processes such as solvent bonding [11] or thermal bonding [12]. Three types of additive manufacturing have been used to create polymeric microfluidic devices including stereolithography (SL), multi-jet modeling (MJM), and fused deposition modeling (FDM).…”