The Evolution of Fluoroelastomer: SIFEL, A New Class of Easily Processed High Performance Elastomer, Adhesive and Sealant

Design and fabrication of chemically robust three-dimensional microfluidic valves

“…It is well known that in geometries much below 10 mm the Reynold's number is very low and the differential fluid flow velocity in the center of the channel versus at the channel wall can be significant. 19,21 These effects limit the usefulness of fluidic systems with dimensions much below the channels and valves that we describe here. Rapid prototyping of microfluidic devices with a solid-object printer has also been reported by the Backhouse 21 and Whitesides 22 groups, but neither group demonstrated devices with integrated microvalves without bonding, because the printers employed were only capable of generating essentially two-dimensional patterns.…”

“…18 The method of these studies involved joining two partially cured perfluoropolymer layers together in a very difficult and low yield fabrication step. However, the wax mold design 19 presented herein eliminates the intricacies involved with adhering partially cured fluoropolyether layers by eliminating the need for a bonding step altogether. By molding a monolithic device from a single mold containing both flow and control channels, this technique enables the use of Fig.…”