title: Rapid fabrication of nickel molds for prototyping embossed plastic microfluidic devices.
abstract: The production of hot embossed plastic microfluidic devices is demonstrated in 1-2 h by exploiting vinyl adhesive stickers as masks for electroplating nickel molds. The sticker masks are cut directly from a CAD design using a cutting plotter and transferred to steel wafers for nickel electroplating. The resulting nickel molds are used to hot emboss a variety of plastic substrates, including cyclo-olefin copolymer and THV fluorinated thermoplastic elastomer. Completed devices are formed by bonding a blank sheet to the embossed layer using a solvent-assisted lamination method. For example, a microfluidic valve array or automaton and a droplet generator were fabricated with less than 100 μm x-y plane feature resolution, to within 9% of the target height, and with 90 ± 11% height uniformity over 5 cm. This approach for mold fabrication, embossing, and bonding reduces fabrication time and cost for research applications by avoiding photoresists, lithography masks, and the cleanroom.
authors: Program in Bioengineering, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA. rnovak@berkeley.edu
authors: Richard
authors: R
authors: Novak
authors: Navpreet
authors: N
authors: Ranu
authors: Richard A
authors: RA
authors: Mathies
mesh_terms: D000475:Alkenes / Q000737:chemistry; D001331:Automation; D017076:Computer-Aided Design; D004247:DNA / Q000032:analysis; D046210:Microfluidic Analytical Techniques / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D009532:Nickel / Q000737:chemistry*; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry; D059010:Single-Cell Analysis
chemical_list: D000475:Alkenes; D011108:Polymers; D009532:Nickel; D004247:DNA