Rapid Prototyping of a Seven Layer Microfluidic Chip with Different Polymer Sheets Using Hot Bonding and a CO2 Laser Beam

A process of fabricating a seven layer microfluidic chip using CO2 laser processing and hot bonding technology is presented. The applied polymer substrates were poly(methyl-methacrylate) (PMMA), polycarbonate (PC), polystyrene (PS) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). The results show the optimal combination of polymer substrates for the seven layer microfluidic chip at the hot bonding parameters of bonding temperature of 100 degrees C and bonding pressure of 1 MPa for maintaining times of nine minutes. Due to the different properties of the polymer substrates, the profile of the microchannel in the different polymer sheets for the same CO2 laser processing parameters. The maximum tensile strength of the microfluidic was measured as 1.0 MPa. The combined polymers with the minimum binding force were PC and PMMA. At the end, a mixing experiment was performed in the seven layer microfluidic chip with different fluid Re numbers.