Large-area and high-throughput PDMS microfluidic chip fabrication assisted by vacuum airbag laminator

Abstract

One of the key fabrication steps of large-area microfluidic devices is the flexible-to-hard sheet alignment and pre-bonding. In this work, the vacuum airbag laminator (VAL) which is commonly used for liquid crystal display (LCD) production has been applied for large-area microfluidic device fabrication. A straightforward, efficient, and low-cost method has been achieved for 400 × 500 mm2 microfluidic device fabrication. VAL provides the advantages of precise alignment and lamination without bubbles. Thermal treatment has been applied to achieve strong PDMS-glass and PDMS-PDMS bonding with maximum breakup pressure of 739 kPa, which is comparable to interference-assisted thermal bonding method. The fabricated 152 × 152 mm2 microfluidic chip has been successfully applied for droplet generation and splitting.