Hot embossing/bonding of a poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) microfluidic chip

Abstract

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) has a low glass transition temperature. Therefore it has significant applications in fields where low bonding temperature is needed. But PET microfluidic chip production using a hot embossing/bonding method has rarely been reported. In this study, hot embossing was conducted for a micro-feature's fabrication on a PET substrate, and a special temperature-pressure profile was used to achieve high replication accuracy without a vacuum; plasma surface treatment was used to improve the bonding capability of PET material, a cover plate was bonded with a substrate at a low temperature of around 63 • C, and VB2 was used as a separation solvent to test the capability of the PET microfluidic chip. The results show that high replication accuracy can be achieved using the new hot embossing process without a vacuum. Plasma surface treatment has increased the surface energy of the PET substrate and hot bonding can be achieved in low temperature. Plasma treatment has also changed the hydrophobic property of PET material; electrophoresis has been conducted successfully.

Gravitational Field-Flow Fractionation Devices Fabricated via a Hot Embossing/Thermal Bonding Method

“…This hot embossing technique has been applied to the fabrication of microchips [27,28]. Although inexpensive and durable templates can be used in this relatively easy-to-operate embossing method [29], various templates still need different temperature-pressure profiles, which have better replication accuracy in the hot embossing process [30]. For the thermal bonding technique, which can obtain a higher bonding strength, the separation channel for gravitational field flow fractionation has a low depth/width, which is similar to those of microchips [31].…”

Cyclic Block Copolymer Microchannel Fabrication and Sealing for Microfluidics Applications

“…Compared with PDMS, thermoplastic is a rigid polymer material that can be shaped or reshaped upon heating above the glass transition temperature (T g ). Myriad thermoplastic materials, such as polycarbonate (PC) [14][15][16], polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) [17][18][19], cyclic olefin polymers (COPs) [20][21][22][23], polystyrene (PS) [24][25][26], and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) [27,28] have been employed in microfluidics. Among them, COPs have high optical transmissivity, satisfactory solvent and acid and base resistivity, and glass-like properties.…”

Rapid polymer microchannel fabrication by hot roller embossing process

“…Among the various polymer materials used in microfluidic systems, thermoplastics such as polycarbonate (PC), polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polyvinylchloride (PVC), and cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) are the most commonly used polymers because of their good mechanical strength, optical transmissivity, chemical resistance, and biological compatibility performance. Researchers have developed a wide variety of thermoplastic replication methods, including hot embossing (Greener et al 2010;Juang et al 2002;Li et al 2008;Martynova et al 1997) thermoforming (Dreuth and Heiden 1999;Truckenmuller et al 2002) and injection molding (Attia et al 2009;McCormick et al 1997), to fabricate polymer microfluidic chips. Using polymer replicas created by hot embossing is the most widely applied approach.…”