Fabrication of microchannels on soda-lime glass substrates with a Nd:YVO4 laser

A new method for fabricating microchannels for microfluidic applications on soda-lime glass has been developed. It consists of a combination of a laser direct write technique for fabricating the microchannels and a thermal treatment for reshaping and/or improving the morphological qualities of the generated microchannels. The proposed technique allows us to obtain microchannels with a minimum diameter of 8 mu m and 1.5 mu m of depth. A decrease of two orders of magnitude of the average roughness generated after the laser ablation, reaching values of the order of the unprocessed glass, has been obtained thanks to the thermal treatment. The use of pulsed nanosecond lasers for the laser direct write presents the benefits of using lasers commonly implemented in the industry for laser processing of materials. This fact makes the technique presented highly competitive compared with others used for glass microstructuring. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.