Investigation of Solvent-Assisted In-Mold Bonding of Cyclic Olefin Copolymer (COC) Microfluidic Chips

The bonding of microfluidic chips is an essential process to enclose microchannels or microchambers in a lab-on-a-chip. In order to improve the bonding quality while reducing the fabrication time, a solvent-assisted bonding strategy was proposed to seal the microchannels immediately after the cover sheet and substrate chip was injection molded in a single mold. Proper organic solvents were selected and the influences of solvent ratios on the surface roughness, microchannel morphology, and contact angle of microfluidic chips were investigated. When the solvent bonding was integrated in the mold, the influences of solvent volume fraction, solvent dosage, bonding pressure, and bonding time on the bonding quality were analyzed. Results show that the solvent cyclohexane needs to be mixed with isopropanol to reduce the dissolution effect. Solvent treatment is suggested to be performed on the cover sheet with a cyclohexane volume fraction of 70% and a dose of 1.5 mL, a bonding pressure of 2 MPa, and a bonding time of 240 s. The bonding strength reaches 913 kPa with the optimized parameters, while the microchannel deformation was controlled below 8%.

Automated summary

A solvent-assisted bonding strategy was proposed to improve the bonding quality and reduce the fabrication time of microfluidic chips. The results showed that mixing cyclohexane with isopropanol can reduce the dissolution effect. The optimal parameters for solvent treatment of the cover sheet were found to be a cyclohexane volume fraction of 70%, a dose of 1.5 mL, a bonding pressure of 2 MPa, and a bonding time of 240 s, resulting in a bonding strength of 913 kPa.