Polydimethylsioxane fluidic interconnects for microfluidic systems

This paper presents novel polydimethylsioxane (PDMS) based interconnects for microfluidic systems with a low dead volume. Through-hole type and "/spl lceil/" type PDMS interconnects have been designed, fabricated, and tested for glass and plastic capillary tubing. Oxygen reactive ion etching and epoxy bonding methods are employed to bond PDMS interconnects to different substrate materials including silicon, glass, polymer and other thin film materials. Leakage pressure, leakage rate, and pull-out force are characterized for these interconnects. For reusable PDMS interconnects, the maximum leakage pressure reaches 510 kPa (75 psi) and the maximum pull-out force is about 800 mN. For nonreusable PDMS interconnects, the maximum leakage pressure is found to be 683 kPa (100 psi) and the maximum pull-out force is 2 N. For both types of PDMS interconnects, the leakage rate test demonstrates that the leakage is not detectable at a working pressure of 137 kPa (20 psi).

[1]  G. Whitesides,et al.  Soft Lithography. , 1998, Angewandte Chemie.

[2]  S. D. Collins,et al.  Fluidic interconnects for modular assembly of chemical microsystems , 1998 .

[3]  K. R. Williams,et al.  Novel interconnection technologies for integrated microfluidic systems , 1998 .

[4]  Chang Liu,et al.  Re-configurable fluid circuits by PDMS elastomer micromachining , 1999, Technical Digest. IEEE International MEMS 99 Conference. Twelfth IEEE International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (Cat. No.99CH36291).

[5]  Y. Tai,et al.  Design, fabrication, and testing of micromachined silicone rubber membrane valves , 1999 .

[6]  D. Beebe,et al.  Three-dimensional micro-channel fabrication in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomer , 2000, Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems.

[7]  G. Stemme,et al.  The first self-priming and bi-directional valve-less diffuser micropump for both liquid and gas , 2000, Proceedings IEEE Thirteenth Annual International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (Cat. No.00CH36308).

[8]  S. Quake,et al.  Monolithic microfabricated valves and pumps by multilayer soft lithography. , 2000, Science.

[9]  Weileun Fang,et al.  Micromachined rubber O-ring micro-fluidic couplers , 2000, Proceedings IEEE Thirteenth Annual International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (Cat. No.00CH36308).

[10]  Liwei Lin,et al.  Micro-to-macro fluidic interconnectors with an integrated polymer sealant , 2000 .

[11]  Aniruddha Puntambekar,et al.  Self-aligning microfluidic interconnects for glass- and plastic-based microfluidic systems , 2002 .

[12]  M. Kothare,et al.  Novel microfluidic interconnectors for high temperature and pressure applications , 2003 .