Microfluidic devices glass microchip fabrication

Interestingly, most research efforts with polymer microfluidic structures have focused on applying the same planar two-dimensional layouts of glass microchips in plastic devices. However, multilayer microstructures, wherein multiple channels can cross over one another without contamination, would significantly increase the operational flexibility in miniaturized analysis. Multilayer microfluidics have been fabricated in glass, and PDMS/glass hybrid microchips.However,... 

Microfluidic platforms comprise a variety of functional elements that perform operations such as pumping, valving, dispensing, labeling, mixing, separation, and detection. Fluidic propulsion is most commonly accomplished by using electrically and pressure-driven forces, especially when sample separations are performed. Microchip devices are typically fabricated in glass, quartz, sil-... 

As glass and quartz exhibit the same surface property as fused-silica capillary, the monolithic materials could be conveniently prepared in a glass- or quartz-based microfluidic device via the same way of monoliths in the capillary. However, glass/quartz devices are rather expensive, and the need for specialized facilities for their fabrication with conventional photolithography technology hinders any rapid modification of the chip architecture. An attractive alternative is using a variety of polymeric materials, such as poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC), and cyclic olefin copolymer (COC), to fabricate microchips for their mechanical and chemical properties, low cost, ease of fabrication, and high flexibility. 

It is clear that material substrate used for microchip fabrication is a key factor since the performance of the microfluidic platform will be strongly dependant of this material. Glass, polymers, and in lower extension silicon are the three main types of materials used for microfluidic devices fabrication. 

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