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Microfluidic & nanofluidic technologies for chemistry, physics, biology, and bioengineering
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Technical Note
Lab Chip, 2007, 7, 1209 - 1211, DOI: 10.1039/b705031c
Design and fabrication of chemically robust three-dimensional microfluidic valves
George Maltezos, Erika Garcia, Grady Hanrahan, Frank A. Gomez, Saurabh Vyawhare, R. Michael van Dam, Yan Chen and Axel Scherer
A current problem in microfluidics is that poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), used to fabricate many microfluidic devices, is not compatible with most organic solvents. Fluorinated compounds are more chemically robust than PDMS but, historically, it has been nearly impossible to construct valves out of them by multilayer soft lithography (MSL) due to the difficulty of bonding layers made of
non-stick
fluoropolymers necessary to create traditional microfluidic valves. With our new three-dimensional (3D) valve design we can fabricate microfluidic devices from fluorinated compounds in a single monolithic layer that is resistant to most organic solvents with minimal swelling. This paper describes the design and development of 3D microfluidic valves by molding of a perfluoropolyether, termed Sifel, onto printed wax molds. The fabrication of Sifel-based microfluidic devices using this technique has great potential in chemical synthesis and analysis.
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