A technique to design complex 3D lab on a chip involving multilayered fluidics, embedded thick electrodes and hard packaging—application to dielectrophoresis and electroporation of cells

Nowadays, lab on chips (LOCs) require the development of new technologies in order to integrate complex fluidics, sensors, actuators, etc. Such integration requires overcoming both technological bottlenecks and an increase in production cost. We propose a technique to manufacture reusable and complex LOCs made up of SU-8 resist for the fluidic structure and of glass for the hard packaging, and are compatible with the integration of thick electrodes. The method is based on the combination of two bonding technologies, both based on a wafer bonder. The first one consists of the bonding of a thin photosensitive SU-8 dry film, which is similar to lamination. The second one is the standard bonding technique which uses a hard substrate covered by an SU-8 layer. The LOCs that can be obtained by combining these two methods are transparent, and include 3D microfluidic structures and thick electrodes. Moreover, these LOCs are reusable, packaged and ready to use. In order to validate the concept, we designed an LOC devoted to cell arraying, using dielectrophoresis, as well as to cell electroporation.

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