Monolithic SU-8 microcavities for efficient fluorescence collection

Abstract

The fabrication of capped microstructures such as channels or cavities typically involves multiple production steps. In this work we demonstrate a fabrication procedure that enables the generation of capped monolithic microstructures of arbitrary geometry in one single exposure step. The presented method also enables the embedment of metal self-aligned surfaces for use as electrodes or mirrors. The devices furthermore demonstrate a capability of increasing fluorescent collection, as measured by an epifluorescent inverted microscope, by up to 15 fold.

BETTS: bonding, exposing and transferring technique in SU-8 for microsystems fabrication

“…The first approach employs sacrificial layers, but it involves a design of the structure with an aperture to strip off the uncrosslinked SU-8 and excessive development time is needed [6]. There is an evolution in various aspects of this approach which aimed at the manufacturing of closed structures: mask-process [7], filling [7], embedded-masks [8,9] and controlled exposure [10,11]. On the other hand, there is an expansion of other alternative techniques like plasma bonding [12].…”