Abstract

Exploration of Digital Light Projection Stereolithography to Fabricate Microfluidic Chips with Fine Features

Florencia Edith Wiria, Research Scientist, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), A*STAR

Microfluidic devices typically consist of micron-size channels. They are conventionally manufactured from two pieces of individually designed and fabricated half-channeled chips that are subsequently bonded together. The bonding process may lead to issues that could compromise performance of the device. Such issues could be misalignment between the channels on one chip and inlets/outlets on the other chip, as well as misalignment between the half channels on each side of the chip, delamination of the bonded device and deformation of the chip’s fine features caused by the thermal or chemical methods used during bonding process. This presentation highlights the effort to produce microfluidic chips in a one-step process without any bonding process. This study investigates the use of an additive manufacturing method, namely digital light projection stereolithography, to produce thin and flat chips with fine features. The results have shown that exposed features as fine as 200 µm and internal features as fine as 500 µm, such as circular channels, are achievable. This study has demonstrated that digital light projection stereolithography is a promising technique to produce chips with channels in a one-step fabrication process. However, there are still challenges to bring forward this technique as a mainstream fabrication process of microfluidic devices.