Development of novel low temperature bonding technologies for microchip chemical analysis applications

We introduce two new low temperature bonding technologies for the assembly of microstructured glass substrates for the realisation of microchannels for miniaturised chemical analysis applications. A first method consists of a proper cleaning of the two glass surfaces, followed by a simple epoxy gluing process at 90 degrees C. In a second method, direct bonding is obtained just by exposing the glass stack to a high pressure (up to 50 MPa) in the 100-200 degrees C temperature range. We obtain bonding strengths as high as 10 MPa, higher than the best values obtained by HF-assisted or plasma-assisted bonding. For the realisation of the microchannels, we introduce, besides the well-known HF-etching technology, two simple alternative methods, namely, sawing and micropowder blasting. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.