Hot Embossing for the Rapid Prototyping of Microstructured Polymers

H. Reineckea, C. Müllera,R. Jurischkaa, Th. Brennerb

a) Laboratory for Process Technology, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 79110 Freiburg, Germany
b) Laboratory for MEMS Applications, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, 79110 Freiburg, Germany

Microfluidic devices are mainly used within the life sciences or chemical analysis. Polymers are ideally suited for these applications due to their physical and chemical properties. The development of micofluidic devices and applications in this device has to be done with respect to the surface properties like roughness or surface energy of the fluidic channels. Especially rapid prototyping methods are leading to surfaces at the devices with uncommon and different behaviour in comparison to the products from the series production processes. In this report, we describe rapid low cost hot embossing technologies with respect to complete process chains to fabricate microstructured prototypes with an excellent and representative surface quality with high aspect ratio. As tools we are using soft tools like PDMS as well as hard tools made of metals or alloys. These methods enables cost effective structuring of technical polymers like polycarbonate or cycloolefin copolymer. The main advantage of these approaches are the availability of the geometry and the specific target material right from the start of the evaluation process of microfluidic devices. The processes described are able to rapid prototyping for the development and evaluation of different microfluidic devices. So the processes can be used for short time to market approaches of micro structured parts.

Keywords

microfluidics, microchannel, SU-8, electroplating, rapid processing, polymer, replication, hot embossing, soft embossing